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Im looking forward to playing darkness, it probably needs support for value scrubbing effectively, but I thought it looked great for trying to gain tempo early by stopping builds or other little micromanagement of the invader momentum. Also for building thunderdomes for spirits that have high damage/AoE but not a lot of push/gather
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Jul 8, 2023 09:54
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My question is, can Mist do its thing inside the darkness?
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Jul 8, 2023 18:54
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Ragnar34 posted:My question is, can Mist do its thing inside the darkness? It's a surprisingly comfy combo! Mist doesn't care about individual pieces of presence as much as other spirits and benefits from the range. Meanwhile it gets a free fear spot while also getting to eventually leave with some of the damaged towns to just plop down a fear farm somewhere else
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Jul 9, 2023 23:02
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Got a game in over the weekend as Dances up Earthquakes and had a lot of fun. I thought it might be fussy but it feels a lot less complicated in practice than the other Very High complexity spirits unless you want to go extremely deep on how you sequence powers. I can see it turning into one of my favorites. Also replaced my storage because I couldn't get everything in my original solution without it being a mess. A bit sloppy and kind of a pain in the rear end, but at least it holds all the stuff with room to spare for whatever bits and bobs Eric adds next time.  
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Jul 11, 2023 22:57
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Fellis posted:Im looking forward to playing darkness, it probably needs support for value scrubbing effectively, but I thought it looked great for trying to gain tempo early by stopping builds or other little micromanagement of the invader momentum. Also for building thunderdomes for spirits that have high damage/AoE but not a lot of push/gather I found Darkness to be really potent in a four-player game because the ability to vacuum up other spirits' presence and vomit them out on a different board allowed rapid establishment and consolidation of sacred sites in the right place for effective targeting. Was a really good partner for Ember-Eyed Behemoth, in particular. Also, having a void full of presence and beasts makes it easier to use the growth options that have finite "vomit out" numbers while still melting the invaders you hold in the outer darkness.
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Jul 13, 2023 16:58
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The expansion arrived yesterday, so I got to play a game as Relentless Gaze of the Sun. It is a very cool spirit—I T1 wiped a city off of the map, effortlessly wiped doomstacks twice, and a couple of times just straight up Bought Us A Fear Card l. Where it is strong, it is really strong. But it badly, badly wants a support spirit. It grows slowly (but consistently), getting new power cards is difficult for tempo (because you don’t get to move while you do it, and miss your delicious DOUBLE ENERGY GAIN option), and is kind of restricted in card plays. But if you have someone who’s good at shoving enemies around, or who boosts your growth, I think it really goes into overdrive.
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Jul 13, 2023 17:14
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I'm so, so bad with sun-bright whirlwind. I tried it once, did nothing productive for 9 turns and then got rocked. And that was against Sweden 2, I have no clue what you're supposed to do against adversaries that don't really need explorers, which is most of them. Relentless gaze of the sun, though. Sounds good. I'm looking forward to comparing sun and downpour, though downpour is strong enough that I expect to be just a little disappointed at first. T1 city sounds tasty as hell though. Wants support? Interesting, kind of like shroud, but Shroud likes everyone anyway. Vvv good point, no reason to play purifying flame three times when you could play vigor of the breaking dawn twice. Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jul 13, 2023 |
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Jul 13, 2023 22:25
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Ragnar34 posted:Relentless gaze of the sun, though. Sounds good. I'm looking forward to comparing sun and downpour, though downpour is strong enough that I expect to be just a little disappointed at first. Downpour plays quite differently. Relentless has much better energy generation but also has to pay more for repeats so you're incentivized to duplicate more expensive cards a lower number of times (or duplicate multiple cards once each, etc). I don't think you'll be dissapointed. Ragnar34 posted:T1 city sounds tasty as hell though. Wants support? Interesting, kind of like shroud, but Shroud likes everyone anyway. I didn't feel like Relentless needed much support the game I played, but I don't think I used the double energy gain more than once over the course of the game so I didn't have any issues getting new cards.
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Jul 13, 2023 22:35
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Just had an incredible two-handed solo game with Gaze and Many Minds against Habsburg 5. Managed to draft Drought, which is just a bananas card to get as Gaze. Reasons why this is incredible as Gaze: 1. two of your most important elements. 2. Lots of unconditional destruction but with a single damage rider that can trigger the Badlands you've been tossing around. 3. Add 1 Blight doesn't matter at all to you if you take a single moon element somehow, which lets Gaze ignore blight adds from powers and instead just lose a presence somewhere. 4. Past like the third turn of the game you will always hit the threhold to destroy a city. 5. You can repeat this for two energy, making turning it into an incredibly cost-effective single land nuke that reads: destroy 6 towns, 2 damage to each town/city, destroy 2 cities. Add 2 blight (but not really, you'll just destroy presence that you can put back on the board with your reclaim growth option.) It almost singlehandedly won the game.
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Jul 13, 2023 23:25
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I got dire metamorphosis as the sun and I already loved that card before it was repeatable and didn't add blight. Three times in one land means invaders are never getting back there again.
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Jul 14, 2023 01:03
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Got brutalized tonight with A Spread of Rampant Green and Bringer of Dreams and Nightmares vs England 6. Made some bad decisions in retrospect and got kinda screwed by an event, but I think we were going to lose anyway, that +1 health for buildings really makes the fear combo potential so much harder with that team. I'm not sure how good those two are together vs more sane opponents, but it felt like there was some decent synergy. We both went for early Major powers and I think we were really lucky on BoDaN getting a card that poo poo out badlands which made ASoRG's damage innate very relevant for knocking down cities. ASoRG's draw was horrible and probably should have tossed it back instead of going for it, but I think it was the right move in general, because you need to risk.
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Jul 14, 2023 06:15
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Yeah, those two are a pretty good combo (though admittedly Rampant Green works well with basically anyone), it's one of my favourites. Rampant Green can bog down the early waves of invaders while BoDaN gets set up, and it's no slouch at generating fear once it's time to sprint for victory. My preferred opening is to use Call of Midnight's Dreams to get a major power early and find one that's easily spammable and synergizes well, then build Rampant Green for support.
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Jul 14, 2023 14:25
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Had a crazy game with Fractured Days against England 6 in a 4 spirit game. Stone's Unyielding Defiance got Bargains of Power and Protection (give all dahan within 1 defend 1 permanently, can stack) fairly early, so Slip the Flow of Time (invaders build then ravage, dahan multiply and push, can repeat) turned into 'destroy everything in a land with dahan, then defend somewhere adjacent'. I got Gift of Twinned Days (you and another repeat lowest cost power) and we had Immense aspected Lightning, so their cheapest power was usually a 3 or 4 cost major and they had plenty of energy to pay for it. We got to repeat Pent-Up Calamity a bunch which was pretty fun, but things really took off when Lightning found Powerstorm. Between Gift, a triple use of Fractured's first innate (reclaim and replay a power), and Powerstorm we got to resolve an extra eleven powers in one turn, which was incredibly complicated to plan out but very fun. Stone also found Trees and Stones Speak of War (damage and defend from dahan, push dahan) so was basically cosplaying as Thunderspeaker shuffling dahan around everywhere. Mist was also present. We still came very close to losing, there was a land at 6 buildings which I had to stasis multiple turns in a row as we had no other way to deal with it, and we had an event draw that increased ravage damage which could have killed us but luckily our fear cards were helpful and we stabilized at 3 blight remaining. misguided rage fucked around with this message at 18:26 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 18:24
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God I fucking love Diablo 3 gold, it even paid for this shitty title
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I've been trying to get some solo games in for reps, and I'm having issues at difficulty 6/7. At 4/5 I cruise, and in multiplayer games, I'm ready to be pushing 8/9, but at 6/7 solo, I find myself not having many close games. A small percentage, I run away with it, maybe 60-70% I feel like I get wrecked early, especially with an unfavorable scenario, and maybe 20%, I actually navigate hard and squeak out a win. And, of those 60-70%, half of them feel nearly unwinnable, even woth perfect info. I don't know what mistakes I'm making, and it's hard to get good feedback with so many variables, but if people have good solo tips at uigher difficulty, I'd love to hear them.
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Jul 14, 2023 18:35
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By 6/7 do you mean like England 6+Prussia 1, or the math in the manual that's like England 3 or 4? The latter I could possibly help with but I can't even do the former. If you're doing England 6 then all I can say is that you're the point where you're just trying to improve the tiny decisions. Probably the best thing you could do is watch videos of high level play. Red Revenge is a playtester and he knows what he's doing, even though he keeps saying Ocean is mediocre for some reason. Which spirits? Which adversaries? Ragnar34 fucked around with this message at 20:32 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 20:29
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one thing about solo is that you can just get crunked by a bad couple of draws in a row. So some losses are going to happen. Are you giving yourself the extra starting blight? You should always start with 3 per player on the blight card, not two. This is errata from more recent printings, and it makes the biggest difference in single player games. Some other things: 1. Are you overplaying your hand? Some spirits, particularly ones that start weaker, don't want to play all possible plays in a given turn. Pacing out your card plays early, even foregoing innates when they're not that impactful, can help you get to your optimal zone at a more crucial time. 2. Are you optimizing for fear and events? Sometimes you just can't solve a problem land before it blights or builds in a problematic way. But you can give yourself a little bit of an edge by trying to maneuver beasts or dahan or presence into it in case one of the helpful events for those pieces fires off. This is more of a hail mary if you don't have a fear card or two ready to deploy, but consider it strongly, esp if you're playing fear or beast oriented spirits. 3. Card drafting is a little different for solo because sometimes you simply have to take off-element or non-synergistic cards because they solve a problem you can't handle. Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and draft a card because you're going to play it right now and forget it later. In general I lean harder into drafting on solo games because you need the answers. 4. Fear and Control are more powerful overall in solo than they are in team games. One or two good fear cards can let you blitz through the fear deck, and control can completely close off part of the island, greatly reducing the amount of problems that pop up. Isolates and other more subtle control effects are even stronger because no one is going to come in from your teammate's board.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:31
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Ragnar34 posted:By 6/7 do you mean like England 6+Prussia 1, or the math in the manual that's like England 3 or 4? The latter I could possibly help with but I can't even do the former. If you're doing England 6 then all I can say is that you're the point where you're just trying to improve the tiny decisions. I've just been mashing quickplay on the app and it spits out random spirit + random adversary/scenario/board at a target difficulty level. So like, 6 or 7 is sometimes Brandenburg 4 or England 2 + Rituals of Terror
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Jul 14, 2023 20:33
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Ragnar34 posted:Red Revenge is a playtester and he knows what he's doing, even though he keeps saying Ocean is mediocre for some reason. Red rules but succumbs to the fate of all high level board game players of developing increasingly idiosyncratic and intense game opinions over time. There's a few like that over in the Discord as well. They're all great.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:41
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Impermanent posted:Red rules but succumbs to the fate of all high level board game players of developing increasingly idiosyncratic and intense game opinions over time. There's a few like that over in the Discord as well. They're all great. Ocean really struggles against Habsburgs and to some extent Russia, and doesn't scale great at very high player counts. I don't fully agree with RedRevenge's reasoning but they're correct that Ocean is considerably weaker since JE came out.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:47
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the holy poopacy posted:Ocean really struggles against Habsburgs and to some extent Russia, and doesn't scale great at very high player counts. I don't fully agree with RedRevenge's reasoning but they're correct that Ocean is considerably weaker since JE came out. these are true to some extent but those are really conditional things that make spirit worse in certain matchups, rather than being like base Shadows Flicker and having a severe "doing-things" deficiency. Anyway, the new aspect for Ocean introduced in NI seems to give it a lot more of a punch against invaders that prefer to go farther afield from the shore, although I'm not sure how much it helps their perceived problems for scaling to higher player counts.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:51
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Impermanent posted:4. Fear and Control are more powerful overall in solo than they are in team games. One or two good fear cards can let you blitz through the fear deck, and control can completely close off part of the island, greatly reducing the amount of problems that pop up. Isolates and other more subtle control effects are even stronger because no one is going to come in from your teammate's board. Yeah, if you've got a spirit with a strong opening (turn 1 + turn 2 fast phase) then you really want to try to lock down the inland if you get the opportunity. Lightning or Fangs gets a lot easier solo when you're potentially only facing one explore per turn. Other solo-specific considerations: You want to watch your corner lands very carefully since they can turn into very nasty cascades very quickly. You may also have to be flexible with your turn 1 + 2 plays in order to prioritize getting presence placement out for range purposes; on a bigger island you're more likely to be able to spill over onto someone else's board in exchange for someone taking bits of yours that you can't easily reach, but in solo if you start in a corner you're SOL.
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Jul 14, 2023 20:52
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I don't play enough high player count games to have an opinion on this, but I've been pretty happy with ocean at 3+ because now you've got 3+ players using the water as a resource. Suddenly every push is a severely undercosted kill. That's wild. And in 1-2 player ocean gets stronger as enemies get more numerous, so higher difficulties end up helping you in some ways, but maybe that doesn't do as much in 3+ since one or more other players probably aren't feeding you at that point. It's an interesting perspective. I'm not going to write it off completely.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:00
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Toshimo posted:I've just been mashing quickplay on the app and it spits out random spirit + random adversary/scenario/board at a target difficulty level. So like, 6 or 7 is sometimes Brandenburg 4 or England 2 + Rituals of Terror Respectable. I tend not to randomize bc I usually have a specific thing I want to try, c.f the Seminole challenge of Mud vs. the French slave state.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:05
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In 4 player games it really helps Ocean to have the other players rewire their brains about what part of the island they need to cover. Let the ocean cover all the coasts and everyone else divvy up the inland. Also Deeps is a really cool aspect. I felt like a king the first time I reclaimed a space for the ocean.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:11
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Impermanent posted:one thing about solo is that you can just get crunked by a bad couple of draws in a row. So some losses are going to happen. Are you giving yourself the extra starting blight? You should always start with 3 per player on the blight card, not two. This is errata from more recent printings, and it makes the biggest difference in single player games. As far as I know the Errata is 2 per player +1, not 3 per player. It's in the Nature Incarnate rulebook, as well as newer printings of the base game.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:22
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Wallet posted:As far as I know the Errata is 2 per player +1, not 3 per player. It's in the Nature Incarnate rulebook, as well as newer printings of the base game. Correct. And I'll add that it's only for the starting blight - when the island card flips it's [x] per player and no additional
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Jul 14, 2023 21:38
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Wallet posted:As far as I know the Errata is 2 per player +1, not 3 per player. It's in the Nature Incarnate rulebook, as well as newer printings of the base game. Perry Mason Jar posted:Correct. And I'll add that it's only for the starting blight - when the island card flips it's [x] per player and no additional Oops, that's right. thank you both for the clarifications.
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Jul 14, 2023 21:42
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the holy poopacy posted:Ocean really struggles against Habsburgs and to some extent Russia, and doesn't scale great at very high player counts. I don't fully agree with RedRevenge's reasoning but they're correct that Ocean is considerably weaker since JE came out. misguided rage fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 21:57
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Ragnar34 posted:I don't play enough high player count games to have an opinion on this, but I've been pretty happy with ocean at 3+ because now you've got 3+ players using the water as a resource. Suddenly every push is a severely undercosted kill. That's wild. And in 1-2 player ocean gets stronger as enemies get more numerous, so higher difficulties end up helping you in some ways, but maybe that doesn't do as much in 3+ since one or more other players probably aren't feeding you at that point. It's more about 5+. The requirement of needing presence on a board in order to get push drowns gets to be a real burden, and even once you get presence everywhere it's less likely that all 5-6 spirits will be able to take full advantage. If part of the board isn't able to participate in drowning then Ocean just gets straight up nerfed since the energy penalty applies regardless. At 4 it's not so bad, Ocean hurts compared to lower player counts but is still plenty strong against most adversaries, but past that things break down. misguided rage posted:Both of them have special rules which seem written to gently caress over Ocean in particular. Habsburgs are especially annoying because often you still get to kill the town (if there's a coast with a blight on it) but you lose out on the energy from drowning it. At least with Russia you get some extra fear. Scotland also makes things harder for Ocean although in practice I haven't found that one too bad. Yeah, Scotland is a real mixed bag and the parts that Ocean hates are necessary to keep it from being a pushover due to the parts Ocean loves. the holy poopacy fucked around with this message at 22:25 on Jul 14, 2023 |
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Jul 14, 2023 22:22
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misguided rage posted:Both of them have special rules which seem written to gently caress over Ocean in particular. Habsburgs are especially annoying because often you still get to kill the town (if there's a coast with a blight on it) but you lose out on the energy from drowning it. At least with Russia you get some extra fear. Scotland also makes things harder for Ocean although in practice I haven't found that one too bad. To be fair I feel like most spirits have an adversary or two that they are poo poo against, particularly at high levels. Spirits that can't destroy towns are going to inherently get poo poo on by France, etc.
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Jul 15, 2023 14:25
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Played Behemoth and it felt like My Kind Of Spirit(tm). Love spirits with strong innates and turtling around the island smashing whole clusters apart with my Incarna felt awesome. Think this one goes on my shortlist along with other innate-strong spirits like Volcano, Lure and Stone Undying Defiance.
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Jul 16, 2023 19:54
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I also got to play the Void Major Power in that game and lol and might I add, lmao.
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Jul 16, 2023 19:55
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I think of Void as the marquee Finder of Paths Unseen major, thematically and practically. It only makes sense to finish off your mobility gameplan by dropping everybody into a black hole.
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Jul 16, 2023 21:25
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I picked up the online version in the Steam summer sale and have put in a few hours so far, it's been a bit rough but I feel like I'm learning.I do have one question, though- how do I adjust to the event deck? It feels like a lot of the positive events are pretty undertuned and rely on having beasts/Dahan in the same zone as invaders, which at least for the game I've played so far wasn't really happening much, and the negative parts were pretty severe- getting the missionaries card twice in four turns was not great, to put it mildly. Which spirits are best at pushing? I'm considering a gimmick game focusing on max feeding Ocean and not sure who it would be best with- River obviously, the wind otter whose name I'm forgetting, BoDaN?
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Jul 18, 2023 17:56
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kvx687 posted:Which spirits are best at pushing? I'm considering a gimmick game focusing on max feeding Ocean and not sure who it would be best with- River obviously, the wind otter whose name I'm forgetting, BoDaN? Whirlwind is a cat, the otter is Mud. Those two and Bodan are definitely up there in terms of pushing power. It’s not pushing exactly (though it’s probably got some of that too) but Finder of Ways Unseen is just about the best spirit there is in overall mobility:
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Jul 18, 2023 19:58
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kvx687 posted:I picked up the online version in the Steam summer sale and have put in a few hours so far, it's been a bit rough but I feel like I'm learning.I do have one question, though- how do I adjust to the event deck? It feels like a lot of the positive events are pretty undertuned and rely on having beasts/Dahan in the same zone as invaders, which at least for the game I've played so far wasn't really happening much, and the negative parts were pretty severe- getting the missionaries card twice in four turns was not great, to put it mildly. It kind of feels like you're comparing the top half of event cards (the major effects) to the bottom half, thinking the bottom is positive and the top is negative, which isn't really the case. A lot of the event effects are extremely situational, and may blow you out one game and do nothing in the next. There are also a number of choice events that are spectacularly powerful if you can take advantage of them. The disease/Dahan/beast effects on the bottom have their own balance based on the kind of token they interact with—disease is sometimes in your favor and sometimes not, Dahan are mostly in your favor but their positive effects are often irrelevant, and beasts are pretty much always in your favor (which makes sense given beast tokens don't do anything inherently).
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Jul 18, 2023 23:40
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Also I saw Bleeding Waters and it seems really cool, and I like that as you progress your spirit gets an entirely new name, either being angry as gently caress and becoming an offense-based spirit or going for more of a support role.
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Jul 19, 2023 07:24
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Bleeding Waters is rapidly climbing my top spirits list. In the one game I played I went full animal and all their unique powers and abilities made controlling my lands very easy. Dealing damage when you add or move beasts and dahan (to a lesser extent) changes the usefulness of so many power cards.
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Jul 19, 2023 15:27
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In the game I played Behemoth, our Wounded Waters Bleeding became Roiling Waters Taste of Ruin and their pack of ravaging beasts pretty much cleared their entire quarter of the map. It was a sight to behold. I like that potentially there are 4 different combinations that you can play, and wonder how useful each other in comparison to each other.
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Jul 19, 2023 15:35
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Tekopo posted:Also I saw Bleeding Waters and it seems really cool, and I like that as you progress your spirit gets an entirely new name, either being angry as gently caress and becoming an offense-based spirit or going for more of a support role. It's very cool, and really, both versions are pretty offense-based. Either you deal damage whenever beasts are moved/added, or invaders are removed whenever invaders are moved. So one is more direct offense and the other is more control/offense, but neither is supportive. In my plays, Wounded Waters feels really strong; once you get past the first few weak rounds you just have an incredible ability to push/destroy multiple things to prevent builds. WW might struggle against adversaries that have a strong start, but WW seems super strong against the new Hapsburg Mining adversary.
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Jul 19, 2023 16:54
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