Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Most of these are imba. David the Prophet is imba imba imba imba imba imba.

Green David's only imba if people insist on stocking their decks full of the real imba cards.

Good point on the seal. I originally had it do opponent but I had the same worries about using it v. a speed deck. I guess I'll make it all players.

Sauce, how are they imba specifically? If you mean they drive a wooden stake through the heart of speed, then good, but are they imba in another way?

Pharaoh is a bit much, I'll add a stipulation that makes him much less of an issue.

Also good point on David the Warrior, I'll tinker with that.

For Asking for Signs, good. That's the intent.


Anything else that's not because it hurts Doms too much?

See, that's the problem, not everybody agree's that dominants are Imba - I tend to sit on the fence, I think the Sog/NJ combo is pretty lame, and don't get me started on Mayhem, but besides that nothing really bothers me. The problem tends to be the ability to get to those cards. Speed is more of a problem than Dominants. Also as we've learned with Search, False Peace, and Susanna, searches that don't limit a target are generally a bad idea as they tend to be really strong. Not only that but David negates Nazareth..... :/ and he's in a brigade where you already have search..... Even if my opponent is only playing with 2 or 3 dominants Dave is going to do tons of searching, for say, my "imba dominants" I attack two times after you've played CM and Aotl, gee thanks for Sog/NJ/Guardian and my own CM..... Oh, I'm also a 2/2 green dude.....

I like everything except Green David and Scroll.

I don't even mind Sign, but I'd add a condition that it can't be negated or discarded by the player who placed it. That way I can't stop you from rescuing, then on my turn negate it and rescue.

Oh, Also, I think you balanced Unto the Least from a T1 gameplay perspective. I think in T2 it might be a bit much, You're up 4-0, suddenly I play Unto the Least, and you're up 3-1, a 2 soul swing. It's worse than SoG/NJ in T2 since SoG/NJ at least takes 2 cards.... I'd reword it so that the opponent has to be 1 soul away from winning, plus ahead by some margin.

I still think Unto the Least is Imba.

Score is 4-0. I play three dominants. Its now 3-3.

I thought you wanted to discourage dominants?

The problem is that if you make make dominant counters they can help but most of them just restrict the flow of your opponents, making yours that much more op.

The problem is that if you make make dominant counters they can help but most of them just restrict the flow of your opponents, making yours that much more op.

Did you look at the cards? All of the dom-restrictive ones except David restrict all players.

Mark, you've been pushing that card forever - I keep telling you that it will only encourage me to build an even faster deck.....

Golden Vessels only triggers off an opponent using a draw ability. It can't be used in speed decks except v. another speed deck.

Indeed. I read the wrong identifier when i read Golden Vessels' ability. Love it.

Quote from: Prof Underwood on May 04, 2011, 10:19:39 AM

That's why we need a card that equally kills ALL players dominants

Artifact - If you have NOT played any dominants this game, then discard this artifact to interrupt all protect abilities and remove all dominants in play and from all players decks, hands, discard piles, and set aside.

Quote from: Red Dragon Thorn on May 04, 2011, 04:14:59 PM

Mark, you've been pushing that card forever - I keep telling you that it will only encourage me to build an even faster deck.....

I know I have   It's only a matter of time though before enough people get fed up with having all top decks with the same cards making up 30% of them.  At some point there will be the critical mass that will desire to open up deck-building in a way that splits the meta into dominant decks and non-dominant decks.  Each would have their strengths and weaknesses and variety would increase.  It's good for everyone.  And besides, there are already a lot of people who make their decks as fast as possible, so they can't get any faster than they already are.  Nothing to lose, everything to gain

It's more upsetting to me that all top decks have cycled between a few brigades / strategies for the past 4 years than people using alot of dominants. Half of them are useless half the time anyways.
It's still not helpful that 40% / 28% of your score is based almost entirely on RNG.

It seems to me that these cards are just bigger, more imba Golgathas.  If cards like these were printed, they'd just become the new dominants.  I like ProfU's suggestion that cards are made to make a dom-less (or lite) deck viable.  "CBN if you haven't played a dominant" etc.

I was thinking more than just the artifact.  Various types of cards that would work well in general (read: not "if used by..."), but become much better if the holder hasn't played X or more dominants.

How do your ideas benefit speed decks any less? Okay, you play Asking for Signs against me. I pop out 2 doms for 2 easy rescues, I use my plethora of enhancements to win a third, then I (interrupt and) discard your KotW taking the EC with AfS with it, drop SoG/NJ, win. The best part is you can only use up to 2 doms to stop those first 3 Souls otherwise you shoot yourself in the foot from your own card.

I honestly don't see how you think these are miraculous dom-stopping cards.

Disciples already deck 2 KotW counters standard: MLaMG and SoT. No extra slots required.

I'm not saying you definitely would, I'm just saying they can be used for that purpose if that's what you're up against.

Sons of Thunder....

If I have to use 2 to kill one fortress then you deserve to squash me.

MLaMG can be fairly useful for killing Gates.

Remind me what MLaMG is please.

Some of these are interesting ideas and some of these would be decent cards but for the most part I don't see how they address your stated concerns.  I like doms and don't want to trash them but I'm all for cards that give people pause on whether they should use them in a deck.  I don't think they are broken but I wish it was a common strategic decision on whether to build with them or not.

Asking for Signs
0/0 Multicolor Evil Enhancement, TC
"Place this card on a Human Evil Character: Protect all Lost Souls from Rescue by a player with more than 2 Dominants in his Discard Pile. Protect Evil Character from Conversion. Restrict owner from targeting this card."   

 I think a speed player could actually benefit from this with the right build.  It would help the speed player if the opponent isn't using their doms or isn't making rescues against the speed players small defense.  The speed player can use ANB to use Doms again which can fit just fine with a speed deck.

A House Divided
Evil Fortress
"Whenever a Demon is Discarded, look at a player's hand, territory and Discard Pile. If no more than two characters of the same Brigade in both alignments are found, player may not attack his next turn." 

Do they have to have 3 good and 3 evil to not get hit with this?  I think this might be like an evil Garden Tomb; most decks it wouldn't help much but you could really abuse it.  You could discard a demon with Gates or from hand to trigger each turn and their are plenty of ways to make sure they don't have the six characters needed.

Unto the Least
Good Dominant
-X=Number of Redeemed Souls by players with the least-
"If a player has four or more Redeemed Souls than X and is one soul away from winning, move a Lost Soul from his Land of Redemption to a player with the least Redeemed Souls." 

I think that would really frustrate players, more than any previous dom.

Pharaoh
12/12 Gold Evil Character, WC
-Egyptian King-
"Unless Moses or Aaron is in play, Discard the top card of opponent's deck to Protect all O.T. Lost Souls from rescue. If you do, you may not attack on your next turn."   

strong but don't see how it is related

Sealed Scroll
0/0 Silver/Green Enhancement, TC
"Search all player's decks and hands for all Dominants you have not yet played. Set them all aside until all players have fewer than 8 cards in deck." 

Can be abused by ANB speed player.  I play that early, draw out most of my deck, then play ANB to get my needed doms at the end.  It would have been ridiculous with Sin in the Camp decks but that got banned.  It could still be abused with combo decks since doms were one of the threats to stop my endless initiative and I didn't use doms.

Golden Vessels
Artifact
-May be activated on your Babylonian Royalty, X=Number of cards drawn by an opponent's ability this turn-
"Protect this card from Dominants. At any time, you may remove this card from the game to draw X cards."

seems weak to me.  Unless it does something else, why include it?  there are better ways for me to draw cards, besides the opponent drawing cards was generally not an incentive for me to not draw.

My ideas of counters are more like:

Remove any number of dominants in your hand from the game to discard 2x dominants from a players deck or hand and x cards from that players territory.  x= dominants removed from hand

I would never use a deck other than speed with all 12 dominants if this card was released.

Yeah, ANB is the exact opposite of speed.

People still play TGT after Golgatha was released.  Just because a counter exists doesn't mean people will stop using whatever's been countered.

Right, but it would be bad if it was countered to the point that you rarely saw them.  Look at how they have countered BtN, capture, territory destruction, choose the blocker, etc.  Those are all still useful cards and strategies but you no longer win 90% of your games with a straight BTN deck.  Capture cards are still good battlewinners for defense but there is so much protection from capture that defenses don't rely on just capture. 

So if you achieved a balance where about 40% used 10+ doms, 30% used about 4 doms, and 30% used no doms, then I think that would be a large improvement to the meta of the game.  It would provide more interesting variety to not 95% of the time know that the opponent is using the same doms and just waiting for when they draw their SoG, NJ, Angel, CM, etc.  So they are still going to be used a lot, but I would to see it be a strategic choice and it be a viable option to not use them at all.