NR feedback (outside of radovid control)
after playing around with pretty much all of NR bronze and silver cards i've spotted some pretty glaring flaws which keep so many archetypes from working properly; i'm just going to give my thoughts on the mechanics of these cards, since numbers can be easily adjusted.
(anyone who dislikes anything i say, feel free to rage in the comments
)
1 - the first large problem of many NR cards is the time it takes to make their plays. for example, cards like reaver hunter and dun banner heavy cavalry take 2 turns to trigger, and their timers tick at the start of your turn.
this gives your opponent 2 turns to respond to your play, which is far too slow for these cards to be properly used. a simple way to make them much better is to make their timers tick at the end of your turn, (including the turn on which they're played) much like vran warrior does.
this way, your opponent only has one play to answer them, allowing your cards to be much more consistent. the trigger at the end of your turn also helps with setup plays of cards which synergize with gold appearing on your field (in the case of heavy cavalry)
IE: you can play heavy cavalry on one turn, and on the next play ves/siege tower and immediately get a benefit.
2 - the second problem is with promote/henselt. needless to say, these cards require long setups to be used effectively, and are completely countered by d-bomb. there's no way to tell how d-bomb will be after the teased positioning patch, but the long setup problem still remains.
the card promote suffers from the same issue of quen, in order to get the full benefit of it's use, you'll be required to spend 2-3 turns setting up your board, and there are just too many ways for your opponent to counter the play. a simple weather is often enough to do the trick since the damage isn't cleared when the units are promoted.
two possible ways to improve promote is to
A) make promote clear all wounds on the card.
B) make promote, similar to quen, affect instances played after the activation of the card. (effect only lasts until the end of the round) as in: if you promote one of your blue stripes commandos, other blue stripes commandos will be turned into gold as soon as they hit the field.
the possibility to use promote on silver cards in your hand would also be very welcome for cards like dandelion or ves, but might end up really broken with trololo and pavetta... something which brings to the next issue:
3 - silver cards being too slow and easy to kill.
dandelion, ves, margarita, and ordrin: four cards which have no effect whatsoever on the turn they're played, and are easily killed by popular removal cards.
all of them are nullified by alzur's thunder, and dandelion is so weak that he can be killed by fireball traps and lacerates... giving those cards some kind of play effect would go a long way to help them:
dandelion:
A) buff X units on your hand
B) buff each unit played on your side for the next X turns
ves: add the ability to immediately play a blue stripes commando if you have a gold card on the field.
margarita:
A) make her ability last until the end of the round (which might be way too powerful, i recognize) but with possible limitations, such as making the adepts unable to be promoted.
B) give her an instant trigger based on the number of golds currently on the field. (with a possible "up to X" limitation)
ordrin: making his trigger at the end of the turn would help a lot, but giving an instant buff to the row he is played would be even better.
for thaller, sira and deathmold, the problem seems to be more about numbers than their actual abilities... deathmold being by far the least useful one since it's only somewhat effective against skelliga, and most of their resurrected units are bronzes which have many copies.
another issue with ves is that she's nearly useless if you've drawn or played your commandos before her... giving her the ability to play them from the graveyard would be very welcome.
as for the golden cards, the only ones which seem to have concept problems are dijkstra and philippa.
the fact that dijkstra demotes units on your side is more of a drawback than an advantage... making all your gold cards vulnerable for a +2str/each is not worth it... especially when all that strength goes away with a simple shackle, since it's counted as a buff.
making him demote only opponent golds (and possibly increasing his str by a bit) would make him much better... or redesigning him entirely.
as for philippa: the fact that her effect can be neglected by d-bomb is by itself a huge drawback... for a 10str gold spy, her ability should be much more reliable than this. two possible ways to make her better:
A) remove all buffs/wounds and set base strength to 1 until the end of the round.
B) a continuous effect on a timer (much like keira metz)
anyway... these are all the major flaws i see in NR cards; as i said at the start, numbers can be adjusted at any time, so i didn't bother taking them into consideration. this was merely an analysis of the design of these cards.
after playing around with pretty much all of NR bronze and silver cards i've spotted some pretty glaring flaws which keep so many archetypes from working properly; i'm just going to give my thoughts on the mechanics of these cards, since numbers can be easily adjusted.
(anyone who dislikes anything i say, feel free to rage in the comments
)1 - the first large problem of many NR cards is the time it takes to make their plays. for example, cards like reaver hunter and dun banner heavy cavalry take 2 turns to trigger, and their timers tick at the start of your turn.
this gives your opponent 2 turns to respond to your play, which is far too slow for these cards to be properly used. a simple way to make them much better is to make their timers tick at the end of your turn, (including the turn on which they're played) much like vran warrior does.
this way, your opponent only has one play to answer them, allowing your cards to be much more consistent. the trigger at the end of your turn also helps with setup plays of cards which synergize with gold appearing on your field (in the case of heavy cavalry)
IE: you can play heavy cavalry on one turn, and on the next play ves/siege tower and immediately get a benefit.
2 - the second problem is with promote/henselt. needless to say, these cards require long setups to be used effectively, and are completely countered by d-bomb. there's no way to tell how d-bomb will be after the teased positioning patch, but the long setup problem still remains.
the card promote suffers from the same issue of quen, in order to get the full benefit of it's use, you'll be required to spend 2-3 turns setting up your board, and there are just too many ways for your opponent to counter the play. a simple weather is often enough to do the trick since the damage isn't cleared when the units are promoted.
two possible ways to improve promote is to
A) make promote clear all wounds on the card.
B) make promote, similar to quen, affect instances played after the activation of the card. (effect only lasts until the end of the round) as in: if you promote one of your blue stripes commandos, other blue stripes commandos will be turned into gold as soon as they hit the field.
the possibility to use promote on silver cards in your hand would also be very welcome for cards like dandelion or ves, but might end up really broken with trololo and pavetta... something which brings to the next issue:
3 - silver cards being too slow and easy to kill.
dandelion, ves, margarita, and ordrin: four cards which have no effect whatsoever on the turn they're played, and are easily killed by popular removal cards.
all of them are nullified by alzur's thunder, and dandelion is so weak that he can be killed by fireball traps and lacerates... giving those cards some kind of play effect would go a long way to help them:
dandelion:
A) buff X units on your hand
B) buff each unit played on your side for the next X turns
ves: add the ability to immediately play a blue stripes commando if you have a gold card on the field.
margarita:
A) make her ability last until the end of the round (which might be way too powerful, i recognize) but with possible limitations, such as making the adepts unable to be promoted.
B) give her an instant trigger based on the number of golds currently on the field. (with a possible "up to X" limitation)
ordrin: making his trigger at the end of the turn would help a lot, but giving an instant buff to the row he is played would be even better.
for thaller, sira and deathmold, the problem seems to be more about numbers than their actual abilities... deathmold being by far the least useful one since it's only somewhat effective against skelliga, and most of their resurrected units are bronzes which have many copies.
another issue with ves is that she's nearly useless if you've drawn or played your commandos before her... giving her the ability to play them from the graveyard would be very welcome.
as for the golden cards, the only ones which seem to have concept problems are dijkstra and philippa.
the fact that dijkstra demotes units on your side is more of a drawback than an advantage... making all your gold cards vulnerable for a +2str/each is not worth it... especially when all that strength goes away with a simple shackle, since it's counted as a buff.
making him demote only opponent golds (and possibly increasing his str by a bit) would make him much better... or redesigning him entirely.
as for philippa: the fact that her effect can be neglected by d-bomb is by itself a huge drawback... for a 10str gold spy, her ability should be much more reliable than this. two possible ways to make her better:
A) remove all buffs/wounds and set base strength to 1 until the end of the round.
B) a continuous effect on a timer (much like keira metz)
anyway... these are all the major flaws i see in NR cards; as i said at the start, numbers can be adjusted at any time, so i didn't bother taking them into consideration. this was merely an analysis of the design of these cards.
Last edited: