CyberneticPony | 2014-11-13 20:53:21 |
Name: Telepath
Power Name: Mental
Lore: Being able to directly hear the minds of others is a very maddening existence. Mostly living in seclusion, the telepaths mostly exist as settlers in remote locations, although a seldom few willingly travel or perform duties within major societies. However, the rarest few are those who try to use their power for their own purposes, whether it be good or evil. Such mages travel with a company of followers, ones they can command with absolute loyalty, and whose minds they monitor to gather information. Such mages are single-person armies, and are about as dangerous as their intellect is. Outsmart the telepath, and his armies shall crumble.
Gimmick: Telepath mostly focuses around two aspects; the first being information gathering, and the second being strategic sabotage once the information is acquired. There is no class ability, and the cards have costs of 1-8 like most. This class is mostly defensive in playstyle.
Work In Progress v1.0
1 - Shield Maiden - Mental Creature - 2/14 - Shield Maiden takes 50% reduced damage from spells (rounded up).
Lore: A Shield Maiden is a loyal protector carrying a heavy shield. This shield is both her weapon of choice, as well as her form of protection from enemy magic. Sometimes all that's needed is a good deflection.
Role: Shield Maiden is a really good chump blocker, and useful to slow down the pace of the game, although her own damage output is low. Shield Maiden is also a good play if spell use is anticipated. She dies to most creatures with time.
2 - Elven Scout - Mental Creature - 5/18 - When Elven Scout enters the battlefield, choose an unrevealed card from the opponent's card pool and reveal it. If all cards are already revealed, deal 4 damage instead.
Lore: Elves have powerful eyes able to see both in the day and within the darkest forests at night. Seeing what's coming is half the battle.
Role: Allows you to scout the opponent, while applying a basic form of pressure. A solid play if you're ahead and want some information. If the game goes on long enough, starts being a powerful aggression tool.
3 - Merfolk Mercenary - Mental Creature - 3/25 - Merfolk Mercenary increases the growth of its owner's Water power by 1 each turn.
Lore: Telepaths often encounter many strange travellers. This creature has acquired a lot of expertise found only within vast oceans, but now brings her knowledge to land. Her respiration is maintained by pure magic.
Role: Water is pretty flexible. If you anticipate the need to economise, the Mercenary is a useful play.
4 - Ghost Projection - Mental Spell - Choose a card from the opponent's card pool. That card is revealed and cannot be played for 4 turns.
Lore: Telepaths can project a mental illusion, confusing the targets of spells or creatures in advance, taking them longer to arrive on the battlefield.
Role: Useful for holding back a dangerous creature or spell you anticipate. Be careful when using this spell, because you're costing yourself a turn to do this.
5 - Illumorph - Mental Creature - 6/25 - When Illumorph enters the battlefield, if there is a blocking creature and its initial attack or initial life total are greater, copy its initial stats. (X counts as 0).
Lore: Illumorphs are creatures who have long left corporeal form and now manifest as a being made purely of light and magic. They learn from those they meet and can copy their characteristics.
Role: Good to deal with heavy creatures. Pretty inefficient if played without the beneficial effect. Pretty weak against elementals unless used for tanking purposes.
6 - Loyalist Protector - Mental Creature - 8/42 - Loyalist Protector's owner cannot take damage from spells.
Lore: Telepaths are protected by their loyalists, a powerful ally linked mentally to them. Loyalists are able to spot and protect the telepath from incoming magical attacks.
Role: Anti-burn, anti-Armageddon, as well as a powerful attacker/blocker in its own right.
7 - Neural Deletion - Mental Spell - Destroy target enemy creature. Deal damage equal to its attack to the opponent.
Lore: Very rarely, when a threat cannot be neutralised by pure force, a telepath will focus his energy into destroying them in a mental duel. By distorting their inner reality, a mind can with enough pressure be shattered into oblivion.
Role: An emergency button; useful removal tool. A tempo loss if you're behind, but it can prevent elementals from getting out of control, as well as dealing with threats you cannot otherwise.
8 - Mountain Cyclops - Mental Creature - 12/53 - Whenever Mountain Cyclops kills a unit, a random enemy card is revealed and its owner gains 1 mental power.
Lore: When a bit of force is needed, a telepath will often trick a giant into doing their bidding. Mountain Cyclops aren't bright but they can certainly take a beating.
Role: Heavy hitter, useful for applying pressure or tanking another heavy hitter. Very vulnerable to removal. Modified by CyberneticPony on 2014-11-13 21:02:13 Sinist | 2014-11-23 09:33:16 |
I like theme of playing with cards directly 1. Too low hp. Dies quickly from creatures attacks, good for genereator/air 9/etc. to place. 2. Good idea 3. Maybe more attack and less hitpoints? 4. I feel this spell just is not worth it. Turn and 4 special mana for dubious "advantage" 5. Very interesting 6. Way too high stats along with powerful ability. Neutralizes dragon completely (probably not very good) 7. I would prefer desintegration any day 8. Wow, what an attack. It needs to be reduced. Add some enetering effect as well CyberneticPony | 2014-11-23 18:48:10 |
I like theme of playing with cards directly 1. Too low hp. Dies quickly from creatures attacks, good for genereator/air 9/etc. to place. 2. Good idea 3. Maybe more attack and less hitpoints? 4. I feel this spell just is not worth it. Turn and 4 special mana for dubious "advantage" 5. Very interesting 6. Way too high stats along with powerful ability. Neutralizes dragon completely (probably not very good) 7. I would prefer desintegration any day 8. Wow, what an attack. It needs to be reduced. Add some enetering effect as well
1. It costs 1, so yes it should die easily to creatures, considering it's hard to touch with spells. Maybe it might get a slight increase, but I don't want it to be too strong. 2. Thanks :-D
3. Maybe, considering it's a generator, it should be closer to 5/16 or something, not too sure as of yet.
4. It's really, really strong to outright deny a card for 4 turns. Consider it does not have to be played on an unrevealed card. Saying "no Dragon", "no Armageddon" "no Rejuvenation" or "no Lightning Bolt" for 4 turns is quite game changing. I think the spell is fine.
5. Thanks again.
6. Just the owner doesn't take damage from spells, the creature itself is not immune. But you're right the health is a bit high. I think I may have typoed and it was supposed to be 8/32.
7. Disintegrate is just different. Consider this does ping damage to the opponent. Imagine someone playing a Titan, only for it to get removed, dealing 9 damage to the opponent, which is 1/6th of their health. I don't think this is a bad card.
8. Compare to Greater Bargul. The reason the stats are so high is that it has no entering effect unlike most high cost cards of its type. It is supposed to be a frightening power hitter vulnerable to removal, value hitters and spells. However I do think I wanted it to be on-par with Greater Bargul, and thus the attack should be 10 and not 12. Modified by CyberneticPony on 2014-11-23 18:53:59 Sinist | 2014-11-23 19:37:06 |
4. And compare with goblin 2 which denies card forever. Sure, random - but cheaper and 5/20 stats. Ice guard is more game changing and can keep board presence. 6. It is often hard to kill such a powerful creature quickly enough, you know 7. Do you seriously think 9 (at best) direct damage is generally better than 11 to all creatures? 8. Bargul hits owner and friendly creatures. Bad design - all 8 level cards need some tornado protection
CyberneticPony | 2014-11-24 03:02:10 |
4. And compare with goblin 2 which denies card forever. Sure, random - but cheaper and 5/20 stats. Ice guard is more game changing and can keep board presence. 6. It is often hard to kill such a powerful creature quickly enough, you know 7. Do you seriously think 9 (at best) direct damage is generally better than 11 to all creatures? 8. Bargul hits owner and friendly creatures. Bad design - all 8 level cards need some tornado protection
4. Goblin 2 denies the CHEAPEST card; this denies potentially the most expensive card. But I see your point, I'll rework it. 6. Isn't that the point? This is supposed to stall burn strategies. 7. No, but I didn't want it to be generally better. Also, it's not 9 at best, elementals that grow high can get pinged for more, but I guess that's a rare case. I'll rework it. 8. Ok, I'll consider a change.
I'll post v2.0 tomorrow. (Editing this post unless replies happen faster).
Modified by CyberneticPony on 2014-11-24 03:02:48 Sinist | 2014-11-24 09:36:52 |
4. Still it is not worth its mana 6. It counters way too hard 4 very viable otherwise cards - air 6, earth 6, fire 11-12. And the whole illusion class. P.S.Comment Swamp class if you happen to have free time Modified by Sinist on 2014-11-24 09:37:14 CyberneticPony | 2014-11-24 10:17:45 |
4. Still it is not worth its mana 6. It counters way too hard 4 very viable otherwise cards - air 6, earth 6, fire 11-12. And the whole illusion class. P.S.Comment Swamp class if you happen to have free time 6. Actually, it doesn't counter hypnosis; making creatures attack their owner isn't spell damage. Similarly, wall of reflection and sea sprite is ability damage and not spell damage. Hasten is also unaffected. Also, yes it deals with all 4 of those mentioned cards, but it merely delays them; the player only has to remove the Loyalist to make them just as viable as they were. Modified by CyberneticPony on 2014-11-24 10:25:04 Sinist | 2014-11-24 10:36:09 |
6. You talk as if it is very easy to deal with 8/42 creature... Highest stats for 6 level, and probably the best ability for his level as well
CyberneticPony | 2014-11-24 11:03:58 |
6. You talk as if it is very easy to deal with 8/42 creature... Highest stats for 6 level, and probably the best ability for his level as well I said it was a typo, and it was supposed to be 8/32, didn't I? I also may consider changing it to something lower too.
Sinist | 2014-11-25 09:12:03 |
You see, there is a flaw in design. In Spectro there are soft counters (let us say, golem vs ornithopter), hard counters (goblin shaman vs sorcery, old basilisk vs rabbit), but there were no extreme counters which negate effect of other card to zero. Before your Protector appeared... I have problem with it
CyberneticPony | 2014-11-27 11:53:33 |
Since nearly all of your points were valid, I've done a rework to give you an idea of the change.
Name: Telepath
Power Name: Mental
Lore: Being able to directly hear the minds of others is a very maddening existence. Mostly living in seclusion, the telepaths mostly exist as settlers in remote locations, although a seldom few willingly travel or perform duties within major societies. However, the rarest few are those who try to use their power for their own purposes, whether it be good or evil. Such mages travel with a company of followers, ones they can command with absolute loyalty, and whose minds they monitor to gather information. Such mages are single-person armies, and are about as dangerous as their intellect is. Outsmart the telepath, and his armies shall crumble.
Gimmick: Telepath mostly focuses around two aspects; the first being information gathering, and the second being strategic sabotage once the information is acquired. There is no class ability, and the cards have costs of 1-8 like most. This class is mostly defensive in playstyle.
Work In Progress v2.0
1 - Shield Maiden - Mental Creature - 3/14 - Shield Maiden takes 50% reduced damage from spells (rounded up).
Lore: A Shield Maiden is a loyal protector carrying a heavy shield. This shield is both her weapon of choice, as well as her form of protection from enemy magic. Sometimes all that's needed is a good deflection.
Role: Shield Maiden is a really good chump blocker, and useful to slow down the pace of the game, although her own damage output is low. Shield Maiden is also a good play if spell use is anticipated. She dies to most creatures with time.
2 - Elven Scout - Mental Creature - 5/18 - When Elven Scout enters the battlefield, choose an unrevealed card from the opponent's card pool and reveal it. If all cards are already revealed, deal 4 damage instead.
Lore: Elves have powerful eyes able to see both in the day and within the darkest forests at night. Seeing what's coming is half the battle.
Role: Allows you to scout the opponent, while applying a basic form of pressure. A solid play if you're ahead and want some information. If the game goes on long enough, starts being a powerful aggression tool.
3 - Merfolk Mercenary - Mental Creature - 3/18 - Merfolk Mercenary increases the growth of its owner's Water power by 1 each turn.
Lore: Telepaths often encounter many strange travellers. This creature has acquired a lot of expertise found only within vast oceans, but now brings her knowledge to land. Her respiration is maintained by pure magic.
Role: Water is pretty flexible. If you anticipate the need to economise, the Mercenary is a useful play.
4 - Ghost Projection - Mental Creature - 5/25 - Choose a card from the opponent's card pool. That card is revealed and cannot be played while Ghost Projection is alive.
Lore: Telepaths can project a mental illusion, confusing the targets of spells or creatures in advance, taking them longer to arrive on the battlefield.
Role: Useful for holding back a dangerous creature or spell you anticipate.
5 - Illumorph - Mental Creature - 6/25 - When Illumorph enters the battlefield, if there is a blocking creature and its initial attack or initial life total are greater, copy its initial stats. (X counts as 0).
Lore: Illumorphs are creatures who have long left corporeal form and now manifest as a being made purely of light and magic. They learn from those they meet and can copy their characteristics.
Role: Good to deal with heavy creatures. Pretty inefficient if played without the beneficial effect. Pretty weak against elementals unless used for tanking purposes.
6 - Loyalist Protector - Mental Creature - 8/32 - Damage from spells or abilities done to the owner are redirected to Loyalist Protector. If there are more than one Loyalist Protector, distribute the damage between them evenly (rounding up).
Lore: Telepaths are protected by their loyalists, a powerful ally linked mentally to them. Loyalists are able to spot and protect the telepath from incoming magical attacks.
Role: Anti-burn, anti-Armageddon, as well as a powerful attacker/blocker in its own right.
7 - Neural Deletion - Mental Spell - Destroy target enemy creature. Deal damage equal to twice its attack to the opponent.
Lore: Very rarely, when a threat cannot be neutralised by pure force, a telepath will focus his energy into destroying them in a mental duel. By distorting their inner reality, a mind can with enough pressure be shattered into oblivion.
Role: An emergency button; useful removal tool. A tempo loss if you're behind, but it can prevent elementals from getting out of control, as well as dealing with threats you cannot otherwise.
8 - Mountain Cyclops - Mental Creature - 10/50 - When Mountain Cyclops enters the battlefield, reveal one random unrevealed card (if able) from each of the houses. Whenever Mountain Cyclops kills a unit, its owner gains 1 mental power.
Lore: When a bit of force is needed, a telepath will often trick a giant into doing their bidding. Mountain Cyclops aren't bright but they can certainly take a beating.
Role: Heavy hitter, useful for applying pressure or tanking another heavy hitter. Very vulnerable to removal. Modified by CyberneticPony on 2014-11-27 11:59:28 CyberneticPony | 2015-08-14 23:50:32 |
You see, there is a flaw in design. In Spectro there are soft counters (let us say, golem vs ornithopter), hard counters (goblin shaman vs sorcery, old basilisk vs rabbit), but there were no extreme counters which negate effect of other card to zero. Before your Protector appeared... I have problem with it BTW, I forgot to mention, but you're completely wrong; Treefolk Protector completely negates Golem Master 1.
Modified by CyberneticPony on 2015-08-14 23:59:04 Sinist | 2015-08-15 08:11:52 |
... BTW, I forgot to mention, but you're completely wrong;
Treefolk Protector completely negates Golem Master 1.
Just one very minor detail... 3. Weak compared to mech 3 4. Requires 3 clicks 6. Almost no difference from elephant
Wavelength | 2015-08-16 14:27:31 |
It's an interesting strategic idea for a class, and a very interesting aesthetic idea, but I'm not a huge fan of the implementation. It's hard to say exactly what should be done to correct it; perhaps doubling down on one of the strategic elements instead of having several of them, or offering a more nuanced way to affect the information game than "choose an opponent's card and reveal it". 1) Looks good to me at 3/14. If it's too powerful, you could reduce to 3/13, which would make it vulnerable to an immediate Stone Rain or a 4 + 4 + Sweep combo. When compared to Lemure, though, I think that 3/14 looks fair. 2) I don't like this. While it might be roughly balanced, I don't like what it adds to the game: a simple, cheap, essentially no-cost way to see your opponent's cards. Once you've revealed two cards in a class - sometimes just one if it's a middle-tier card - you can often read your opponent's entire hand in that school. See Plynx's PBG post on Information. 3) Makes for way too early Mind Masters and Astral Guards. This is a game-ruining card and needs to be reworked. Possible suggestion: 4/23, and grants 1 mana of the type of creature that your opponent plays each turn (their Special cards -> your Special mana)? This plays into your class' theme well by rewarding you for figuring out what they are going to play next and punishing you if you fail to see they're about to use spells. 4) I agree that it was too weak in its original spell form. But I consider it problematic either way. The rate of 4 mana/4 turns means you can "nope" a spell for the entire game so it will be imbalanced based on whether your opponent has any good alternative moves to make with the mana. If they have a Chain Lightning Screw, this card will make the game literally unwinnable for them. If they have A6-A8-A10 however... I would say this card is really interesting and I'd like to see something similar in the game, but it probably needs to be attached to a higher-cost creature and maybe the effect should be something softer like "costs 4 extra mana to cast that card". 5) I'd recommend changing it to "copy that stat" if the opposing creature has a higher stat, instead of "copy (both) its initial stats". I tried to think through the best use cases for the card - Steam Tank, Titan, Chastiser, Merfolk Overlord - and in each case you're only barely breaking even with this play (and allowing your opponent tactical advantages like board clear opportunities by letting them play the Steam Tank first). I think it's totally reasonable to let this be 6/40 against a Water Elemental or 7/25 against a Phoenix. By the way - while I really like this card, I don't really feel it fits with the strategic theme of this class. Your opponent needs to reveal the card himself by playing it in order for you to ever make use of Illumorph; simply knowing the card doesn't really help and it doesn't produce quite enough "threat value" to stop them from playing the creature in the first place. 6) It's just a worse White Elephant. Given that we were discussing the other day how WE's problem is its massive 8 attack power, I'm genuinely surprised that you decided to give Loyalist Protector the same 8 attack power. (BTW, I agree with Sinist that the original version was disgustingly strong.) It's one of the better thematic cards, but figure out some more creative way to stop spells. 7) The original version (1 * attack power instead of 2 * attack power) was more balanced. Sure we'd prefer Disintegration any day - but Disintegration is in an all-spell class (which is a weakness that allows its individual cards to be slightly stronger) and it costs more mana. Think of it this way: if Special mana is worth 1.75 regular mana, then 7 * 1.75 = 12 ordinary mana. This makes a "Tornado" in slot 7 less mana efficient but (in most cases) more spammable (and IMO Tornado is by far the strongest card in the game). You only want to add a slight benefit to it. 18 damage on a "nope'd" Dragon or even more on a big elemental is not a slight benefit. In addition, having (possibly) two Tornadoes as a player who can play spell-dampering 3/14s or 5/18s allows you to achieve a ton of board presence if you can figure out your opponent's cards. It's almost too strong even at 1 * attack, although it's thematically good for a class like this. 8) I absolutely hate the new come-into-play effect. I liked the old version a lot better (it was strategically interesting because the opponent could choose to take the damage or play a high-board-presence creature to try to deny information at a high cost), although you do need some sort of come-into-play or on-death effect so that it doesn't get Tornado'd without doing anything (8 * 1.75 = 14 ordinary mana which is an unacceptable amount of value to lose to Tornado). Possible suggestion: 9/46; when kills a creature, reveals a random card in that creature's school and you gain 1 Neural mana. When killed by a spell, reveals a random card from every opponent school and you gain 1 Neural mana. So what we've got right now is a few really cool cards, a few thematically cool but imbalanced cards that need work, and a few cards that don't really belong in the class. There's definitely potential here; let's work on it and sharpen the class' focus while allowing more interesting play and counterplay. (P.S. - Goblin Shaman also completely no-sells Overtime. ) This review based on the following version of the class:Work In Progress v2.0
1 - Shield Maiden - Mental Creature - 3/14 - Shield Maiden takes 50% reduced damage from spells (rounded up).
2 - Elven Scout - Mental Creature - 5/18 - When Elven Scout enters the battlefield, choose an unrevealed card from the opponent's card pool and reveal it. If all cards are already revealed, deal 4 damage instead.
3 - Merfolk Mercenary - Mental Creature - 3/18 - Merfolk Mercenary increases the growth of its owner's Water power by 1 each turn.
4 - Ghost Projection - Mental Creature - 5/25 - Choose a card from the opponent's card pool. That card is revealed and cannot be played while Ghost Projection is alive.
5 - Illumorph - Mental Creature - 6/25 - When Illumorph enters the battlefield, if there is a blocking creature and its initial attack or initial life total are greater, copy its initial stats. (X counts as 0).
6 - Loyalist Protector - Mental Creature - 8/32 - Damage from spells or abilities done to the owner are redirected to Loyalist Protector. If there are more than one Loyalist Protector, distribute the damage between them evenly (rounding up).
7 - Neural Deletion - Mental Spell - Destroy target enemy creature. Deal damage equal to twice its attack to the opponent.
8 - Mountain Cyclops - Mental Creature - 10/50 - When Mountain Cyclops enters the battlefield, reveal one random unrevealed card (if able) from each of the houses. Whenever Mountain Cyclops kills a unit, its owner gains 1 mental power.
Modified by Wavelength on 2015-08-16 14:30:29 CyberneticPony | 2015-08-25 00:48:36 |
This is a dumped class idea for me; while I like the mechanics, I feel like it'd need a serious rework to get it off the ground. I just remembered when Sinist made the "no card negates another to zero" argument and it was super, super wrong so I had to call him out for it. Modified by CyberneticPony on 2015-08-25 00:49:10 |