Poison In NG Could Be a Future Archetype

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While I see the problem, I'm not too fond of any of these ideas.
Needing more poison stacks makes poisoning large units extremly risky or even impossible because you need a lot more poison to do it. Also, I like that poison is an alternative to normal damage cards and can be played without them. And while some of the other ideas would sound nice, they would completly remove poisons current niche, which would just lead back to cards like Geralt or other high unit killers and would reduce varity.

So, two different suggestions:
1. A unit with double poison takes X damage at turn end instead of being instantly destroyed. X could be 5.
This would be similar to the multiple poison stacks in the way that you would need more to kill larger enemies, but the enemy would eventually die with 2 stacks. Also it would allow some way of counterplay by healing a poisoned unit or boosting it enough for it to stay alife longer.

2. A unit with doulbe poison will be set to 1 strength immediantly and on turn end. This way the value removal is still there, but to completly remove the card from the board pinging it would be necessary too.
This way the player using poison would atleast need 1 more combo piece for the removal.


Hello FG15-ISH7EG.

thank you for adding to the discussion.

To your point regarding a stacking poison mechanic. The issue of needing more Poison for it to work can be fixed with relative ease. You simply need to implement more creative ways to add Poison to a Unit. Look at my suggestion for a rework of Cadaverine for example. It would allow any other card that deals damage to apply Poison as well. And since this thread is about a potential Poison archetype, new cards are to be expected.

In Terms of Poison being an alternative to damage, there is the question if it is supposed to be one or not. As it appears right now, Poisons seems to be an alternative to other tall removal cards and a supplement to damage. Also, most decks include damage anyway, regardless of being able to use poison. Most people would probably use Poison instead of Tall removal in it´s current form, if they use poison at all. Two "Fangs of the Empire" is 8 provisions and two 4 point bodies while Geralt for example is more expensive, only 3 strength and can be bricked more easily.

Lastly, I spend some time thinking about your suggestions. Variant 1 sounds interesting but might be a bit close to the way the bleeding mechanic works. Also cards like Living Armor or Olgierd von Everec could not be removed in this way. While this would make sense from a Lore standpoint, it just simply means that mechanically it would still be necessary to tech against some cards with additional tall removal. So it would still "take poisons niche" how you put it.

Variant 2 is the more interesting if you ask me. It would still mean that you would need to combine Poison and damage, but like established above, this is no issue. However, there is the potential issue of engines. In it´s current state, poison can also be used to eliminate an engine, if there is no tall Unit you want to eliminate instead. Most engines have a base strength of 4 or lower. Thus, a card like Tourney Joust would arguably be better in this case.

This however doesn´t have to be a negative. It probably could be treated as a balancing mechanic were if you want resets and more range you go with a Combo of Poison and damage. If you want more removal you go pure damage.

Overall, I think Variant 2 is something CDPR could try in a Test-Environment and then go from there.
 
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