I get needing random draws to prevent the best version of each hand constantly being played. But random for units is just not strategic. Random deathwish, random Shupe, random create, random tactics cards, etc... If the goal of the game is to be strategic, than why put an RNG component in the game in such an important way?
They love random. I'd have a wittier burn but can't think if anything so I'll just add random at the end.
Because it actually makes the game a lot more strategic in some cases. Let's stay with your example of the random Deathwish. If we look at Rotfiend, he is able to deal 4 damage to a random enemy. Basically he does ranrdomly deal any damage between 1 and 4 depending on the state of the board. But if the player removes all 1 and 2 point units from the opponents side before using rotfiend, he will deal at least 3 points of damage.
Furthermore having such random effects is a way to balance certain effects, because being able to direct damage is always a lot stronger than random damage (except if the enemy has immun units), because you can focus the key units. So having an engine that deals 1 damage at random, actually makes it strength really calcuatable, because that 1 point of damage will be only 1 point of damage and nothing more on average, while 1 point of directed damge can allow players to focus valuable targets and therefore allows them to shut enemies down.
as fg15 said things are only as random as you let them be. removing ALL sources of "random" is not good. controlling the randomness can be built into a deck / skill. also playing around your opponent's random abilities can be done.
The only random that really annoys me is the archespore / archespore / gerni fruit / nekker matchups you see so often in MO mirrors. sometimes gerni loses nothing real just a fruit while the other monster loses two thrives.
Also shupe should probably not be so good.
The only random that really annoys me is the archespore / archespore / gerni fruit / nekker matchups you see so often in MO mirrors. sometimes gerni loses nothing real just a fruit while the other monster loses two thrives.
Also shupe should probably not be so good.
The flaw in your argument is that the inability to target actually increases the balance. There are a ton of damage cards that can you can choose to use that get less value from their maximum that are used to deprive the enemy of a card. For example, assume your playing against NG, the golem has drawn an 8 point Olaf card and has 3 HP left. You have the evil unicorn (crionx or something like,) you decide to kill it rather than let it be reset. This is a choice to reduce value to eliminate risk. Your point about making the choice to eliminate all the smaller units before using a deathwish assumes you have the option. Some enemies are engines, others are orders, not all enemies are created equal. When the difference between victory and defeat is based on the RNG of targeting the game is less about skill and more about luck. Another example is create. I have seen speartip get created in exchange for two of the witcher trio. Against monsters the extra speartip actually counts for 26 points because of consume. This is again a luck based system as sometimes the value of the create card will be much smaller. Your response is likely that using create is a risk and costs provisions, however the inconsistency makes the game again about RNG rather than planning. Is this game supposed to be more like chess or poker. The draw is already as luck based as the game needs to be.
I fully agree. If this is supposed to be a skill-based strategy card game, the randomness should come from your card draws and not from too much randomness and a too large value range of a card's abilities. It's silly that you can lose because your opponent just gets lucky and spawns a Speartip or spawns a very powerful legendary gold spell purely based on RNG.
Edit: Also cards like Vilgefortz and Tibor. It's just gambling, with the addition of the "Summon" mechanic which is also a gamble as it bricks deploy cards but not others.
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