The problems with Movement.

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I'm ST main, and Movement is probably my favorite archetype. I've been trying to make it work since beta pretty much, and it never really worked. Even with the ton of support it received in the WoTW - most notably in the form of Gezras, Gaetan and the Cat Witcher - it still sucks and never really NOT sucked. The new cards, as powerful as they are, improved some other decks, but Movement as an archetype never managed to become a staple of ST.

Now one of the problems has always been the lack of win condition. Even Gezras only ever plays for about 12, because of extreme setup condition and almost constant immediate removal. He's basically an Oak - he ONLY works in long round - except Oak also provides targeted removal AND would trigger about 5 engines in its heyday. You can maybe prolong Gez's life for another turn with the defender (if it's not immediately answered itself), but even then, your restrictions are killing you: adrenaline, long round, the requirement for your enemy to stack melee row, etc. In short, you'll never get 20 out of him even in a long round, and he's completely worthless in a short round, which is laughable in this day and age. And he's the best card the archetype has.

The other problem is... the lack of row-locks. Yes, I don't think there are enough row-locked units in the game, which kills Movement's offensive potential. The few offensive movement options there are: leader, Nivellen, Aard, Malena are too weak and produce too little value when moving opponent's units, so you basically end up focusing on boosting rather than damage, which your boosting set up is not good enough to compete with other greedy decks.

Which brings me to the main problem, and really, I think, the one that needs to be fixed, even if the first two are untouched. Namely: Movement is an engine archetype whose 3 core engines: Sentry, Matron and the Cat Witcher ALL REQUIRE other core engines to be on the board to return value, because they are absolutely terrible by themselves. Does this need to be elaborated? The sentry basically does nothing: it's a 4 point play. He needs either Matron or the Cat witcher to become an engine, so you basically skip a turn when you play him. The Matron requires a unit to the right of it every turn in order to become a 1 POINT ENGINE. The Cat Witcher (Oh so OP!) is a non-proactive 1/2 POINT ENGINE potentially, unless your opponent either plays directly INTO him, OR you expend additional resources (read: CARD OR LEADER) to move enemy units into position for him. Even when you hit that "terrifying" adrenaline that had to be nerfed, it's still basically a 1-per-turn engine without assistance.

ONLY when you have at least 2 of these core engines on the board at the same time, some semblance of "value" begins to be generated, and so, effectively, when you remove ANY ONE of them (which is very easy to do, unless you're full solitaire), you are basically removing TWO for the price of one, because the other engine that's not removed is immediately crippled. Yet, these cards are priced and treated like all other engines, and actually, in fact, priced higher than some engines that are better-protected and/or self-sufficient.

In conclusion, I'm not asking for all 3 problems to be fixed. I think fixing ONE of the three would go a long way and may actually be enough, and to me, the main one is the last one. What needs to happen here is: either all 3 of those core engines need to get extra protection (points, armor, shield, veil, anything really), OR they ALL need to be made 4p.
 
I really love movement as an archetype (idea), too; not in actual gameplay, because everything you write is true. An engine/support card like Malena, only with a stronger body and Veil would be great. Malena could be changed to "At the end of the round, pull a random enemy unit to the front row" (because she's so alluring, you know). These simple changes would already strengthen the archetype...
 

DRK3

Forum veteran
I dont really agree with OP's general idea. I am not a fan of the archetype, at least in the form it takes since WotW.

If you're going to compare ST movement with current top tier decks? Absolutely, its weak... but so are most other decks.

And another issue ST movement has is the vulnerability to hyper control decks. This is not strange, since its an 'old school' engine deck, and those always lose to control decks, only more recent engine decks that benefitted from powercreep are somewhat able to resist to control decks.

My main issue with OP is it makes it seem ST movement is always super weak, however when not countered, it's still one of the strongest engine overload decks, because the points generated per turn are able to scale exponentially instead of linearly (where every engine provides a limited value), due to synergy between engines.

I have faced ST movement enough to know its very hard to beat on long rounds when you dont have much control, i've even lost to it with CA and good hands, so its definitely one of those decks you need to bleed R2 if you're not hypercontrol.

I do agree with one point however - the lack of row-locked units. In the past expansions there's been less and less of these (in PoP, only the Patience mages, making them more vulnerable than they already are), which made me stop using movement units as tech options.
And i dont think this choice - of making less row-locked cards - was deliberate, it's more likely its a mechanic they are forgetting about.
 
I played a couple of "movement" matches this season with terrible results.

For me the main problem when playing an offensive movement deck is the fact it got hard to punish row stacking. "Crushing Trap" and "Lacerate" got power-crept. The initiative tag on Geral:Igni is detrimental for the deck, as you can no longer use your leader ability to align the unit to remove.

There are even some decks that profit from having all units on a single row (Sabbath). Using lacerate on a Sabbath row feels just like tickling the Monster player.

The other problem is... the lack of row-locks. Yes, I don't think there are enough row-locked units in the game, which kills Movement's offensive potential.
This is indeed a problem. It would be great if row-locking could be used as balance tool once again. Rows have lost meaning: "Reach" got removed in "Homecoming", from beta the siege row got removed, and in general row-restrictions got rare.

In my opinion, buffing Cat Witcher or any other engine is not the way to go. That really doesn't add to any flavour to the archetype. It might fix its power level, that for sure, but what I would like is to have the rows mean something.
 
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My main issue with OP is it makes it seem ST movement is always super weak, however when not countered, it's still one of the strongest engine overload decks, because the points generated per turn are able to scale exponentially instead of linearly (where every engine provides a limited value), due to synergy between engines.
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Yes, like all engine decks, it's good when unanswered. The problem - and the difference from the other engine overload decks - is that it's much easier to answer that other engine decks. When you have two thrive engine, or assimilate engines, or harmony engines, or mahakam defenders, whatever, and one of them gets answered, the other one keeps going. IT DOESN'T care. But if you have a Sentry and a Cat Witcher on the board and the CW gets removed, the sentry is a dead card doing nothing, and if the Sentry gets removed, then your Cat Witcher is just a 5p 1/2 point per turn engine. 66% of its value is basically gone. Like I said above, removing just one of them you basically kill both with one stone, and this potential of supposed exponential progression you're referring to (which by the way only applies to points generated by the Sentry, so really you only need to remove the Sentry to kill the entire deck) is not nearly viable enough to balance out how fragile and vulnerable this setup is.
 

Guest 4375874

Guest
Yes, like all engine decks, it's good when unanswered. The problem - and the difference from the other engine overload decks - is that it's much easier to answer that other engine decks. When you have two thrive engine, or assimilate engines, or harmony engines, or mahakam defenders, whatever, and one of them gets answered, the other one keeps going. IT DOESN'T care. But if you have a Sentry and a Cat Witcher on the board and the CW gets removed, the sentry is a dead card doing nothing, and if the Sentry gets removed, then your Cat Witcher is just a 5p 1/2 point per turn engine. 66% of its value is basically gone. Like I said above, removing just one of them you basically kill both with one stone, and this potential of supposed exponential progression you're referring to (which by the way only applies to points generated by the Sentry, so really you only need to remove the Sentry to kill the entire deck) is not nearly viable enough to balance out how fragile and vulnerable this setup is.
thrive engines don't typically start out at 4 as the others so in a short round they are bad. in fact they are easier to remove and lose point potential as the match goes on. Cat witcher has no ceiling and self activates. They both have strengths and weaknesses. This is also a rather odd comparison using Sentry and Cat witcher instead of two cat witchers (as you have with thrive or assimilate), which if aren't removed can carry a round. Damage is more valuable than boost and all of the above advantages mean you have to work for the setup, that's called balance.

Assimilate on the other hand makes no sense to me. To this day no one has been able to tell me why banishing a card from your deck triggers assimilate. And unlike the other engines it has the added advantage of being able to trigger twice in one turn each time it's triggered. But it's NG so what do you expect
 
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thrive engines don't typically start out at 4 as the others so in a short round they are bad. in fact they are easier to remove and lose point potential as the match goes on. Cat witcher has no ceiling and self activates. They both have strengths and weaknesses. This is also a rather odd comparison using Sentry and Cat witcher instead of two cat witchers (as you have with thrive or assimilate), which if aren't removed can carry a round. Damage is more valuable than boost and all of the above advantages mean you have to work for the setup, that's called balance.

Assimilate on the other hand makes no sense to me. To this day no one has been able to tell me why banishing a card from your deck triggers assimilate. And unlike the other engines it has the added advantage of being able to trigger twice in one turn each time it's triggered. But it's NG so what do you expect
OK, I'm definitely with you on Assimilate, but your thrive argument is not that solid. The "typical" thrive engines, whatever that means, either start at 3+ OR they start by putting 2 engines on the board simultaneously. And there are a few of them at 4p, btw. So yeah, everybody has strengths and weaknesses, but I think we both know who has more of what.

And as for my example, I used the Sentry and Cat Witcher because I was NOT "using" the same cards when talking about Thrive and Assimilate. In fact, although I haven't specified it, I meant two different engines from respective engine decks and only named 2 of the same cards when I added the dwarves at the end, which I guess messed it up a bit.

But sure, we can say two Cats, except why not two Matrons or two Sentries then? Of the 3 core movement engines, only one actually works if you remove its pair, and by "work" I mean it gets 1/2 points of damage per turn, on par with the 4p swordmaster, except his damage is random. Without that sentry, then, his movement is completely pointless and in fact detrimental in certain matchups, such as weather.

That's not called "balance". If it was balanced it wouldn't suck this much.
 
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