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CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal

Elblanco posted:

I will say that the last game in the campaign is a huge pain in the rear end. I ended up having to google a deck list to get through it. It was a fire/time token deck. It seriously took me 10 tries to finish it. I'm so glad I don't have to do it again.

I think I got lucky. I beat it on the first try using the default shadow deck.

What the heck is a totem?

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Elyv
Jun 14, 2013



CubeTheory posted:

I think I got lucky. I beat it on the first try using the default shadow deck.

What the heck is a totem?

A purely visual doodad that sits on one side of the battlefield while your opponent's sits on the other, as far as I can know.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Elblanco posted:

I will say that the last game in the campaign is a huge pain in the rear end. I ended up having to google a deck list to get through it. It was a fire/time token deck. It seriously took me 10 tries to finish it. I'm so glad I don't have to do it again.

One of the tutorial fights beat me when I first tried the game, and when I wanted to get back in, I had to finish the tutorial. I like that it's not handholdy "YOU CAN'T LOSE", but it can be a bummer. And the last fight in the Gauntlet tends to be the most interesting, since it has a built-in gimmick.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!
Where exactly is this game in it's development cycle? There have been tons of cool looking card games over the years, but often they die out quickly because of a lack of player base. How far along is this game, and how many people are playing it, because right now no one is streaming it in Twitch at all, which is generally not a good sign.

Edit: Can anyone who has it also talk about what it offers over Hex, because it seems pretty similar in the whole trying to be an actual good MTG-like digital card game.

Megasabin fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Nov 5, 2016

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Megasabin posted:

Where exactly is this game in it's development cycle? There have been tons of cool looking card games over the years, but often they die out quickly because of a lack of player base. How far along is this game, and how many people are playing it, because right now no one is streaming it in Twitch at all, which is generally not a good sign.

The second set is being made, and will probably release along with open beta, reddit gets new threads every few hours, folks are streaming pretty often (judging from the "content creation" channel on Discord), RNG is hosting tournaments every week I believe...

It's not exactly Hearthstone, but there seems to be an active player base, especially since it's in closed beta. I expect open beta will consolidate a lot, and make it easier to grab people, especially Magic folks, and no clunky "wait or ask reddit" issues.

Kraven Moorhed
Jan 5, 2006

So wrong, yet so right.

Soiled Meat

Elblanco posted:

I will say that the last game in the campaign is a huge pain in the rear end. I ended up having to google a deck list to get through it. It was a fire/time token deck. It seriously took me 10 tries to finish it. I'm so glad I don't have to do it again.

I had the same experience with my first match, but then went time/justice and wiped the floor with it.

For anyone who may be reading this that's having difficulty with the Strangers fight, keeping their creature count low is key. Anything you play with less than two power is a potential liability in this fight, and if their toughness is less than three you're only going to be trading creatures -- you don't want that. Big asses with enough power to ward off attacks will help you stabilize, and sometimes you'll be able to bait out a group block that can let you kill one of their more threatening creatures.

Oh, and have answers for the flying one. gently caress that guy.

Kraven Moorhed fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Nov 5, 2016

Phrosphor
Feb 25, 2007

Urbanisation

Really enjoying this so far. Is there much point in leveling up my forge ranking or am I better just saving gold for Draft?

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Phrosphor posted:

Really enjoying this so far. Is there much point in leveling up my forge ranking or am I better just saving gold for Draft?

Draft's where it's at, I haven't done more than one or two Forges. Worth doing the free one, but I wouldn't recommend focusing on it, off the top of my head.

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal

Kraven Moorhed posted:

I had the same experience with my first match, but then went time/justice and wiped the floor with it.

For anyone who may be reading this that's having difficulty with the Strangers fight, keeping their creature count low is key. Anything you play with less than two power is a potential liability in this fight, and if their toughness is less than three you're only going to be trading creatures -- you don't want that. Big asses with enough power to ward off attacks will help you stabilize, and sometimes you'll be able to bait out a group block that can let you kill one of their more threatening creatures.

Oh, and have answers for the flying one. gently caress that guy.

I played the default black deck, held my removal for key targets, got out the guy that gets bigger when anything dies, and then forced trades all day until they couldn't deal with him anymore. He was like a 30/30 or something by the end.

Elblanco
May 26, 2008
I've only been playing a day, but I've realized that ranked is completely unforgiving. Build a tier deck from RNG before you head in. I went 0-5 on placement matches, so I'm bronze 3. Hoping to build either big combrei or ranako warcry though.

standard.deviant
May 17, 2012

Globally Indigent

Elblanco posted:

I've only been playing a day, but I've realized that ranked is completely unforgiving. Build a tier deck from RNG before you head in. I went 0-5 on placement matches, so I'm bronze 3. Hoping to build either big combrei or ranako warcry though.
Rakano Warcry is a more reasonable starting deck. Big Combrei has something like 15 legendaries (4 each Knight-Chancellor, Titan, Ironthorn, 3 Mystics).

standard.deviant fucked around with this message at 05:29 on Nov 6, 2016

Phrosphor
Feb 25, 2007

Urbanisation

Elblanco posted:

I've only been playing a day, but I've realized that ranked is completely unforgiving. Build a tier deck from RNG before you head in. I went 0-5 on placement matches, so I'm bronze 3. Hoping to build either big combrei or ranako warcry though.

Yeah I am finding ranked really tough as well, I am playing from Australia and when there isn't a lot of people online you get matched up, I am playing a lot of silver and gold players while I am in bronze three and it can be a little disheartening. Having success with Rakano Warcry, even my babby version can outspeed some decks when I get a good draw.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Elblanco posted:

I've only been playing a day, but I've realized that ranked is completely unforgiving. Build a tier deck from RNG before you head in. I went 0-5 on placement matches, so I'm bronze 3. Hoping to build either big combrei or ranako warcry though.

Yeah, Ranked is like that. I did solid work with the Stonescar Jito deck (now T2), for example.
But at least T1 decks can be cheap as hell, Rakano Warcry is, what, 16000 Shiftstone? Minus the stuff that you probably have already (Banners, Seats, Oni Ronin, etc) I think that it can usually be made for ~10k or something, which isn't bad at all for a deck that strong.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!
I've been watching streamers play this. The failure of land based CCGs to properly use digital mechanics to mitigate lovely draws is baffling to me. Bad hands/draws in land based CCGs lead to very unrewarding random gameplay.

They borrowed Hex's smart land system, but opted not to use a replace mechanic as well. If you are using lands, you better have multiple systems in place to mitigate mana flood/screw. Otherwise you've wasted the potential of a digital platform, and kept around an age old issue that is incredibly unappealing.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Megasabin posted:

I've been watching streamers play this. The failure of land based CCGs to properly use digital mechanics to mitigate lovely draws is baffling to me. Bad hands/draws in land based CCGs lead to very unrewarding random gameplay.

They borrowed Hex's smart land system, but opted not to use a replace mechanic as well. If you are using lands, you better have multiple systems in place to mitigate mana flood/screw. Otherwise you've wasted the potential of a digital platform, and kept around an age old issue that is incredibly unappealing.

There is some mitigation in Eternal, when you mulligan, the redrawn hand is guaranteed to have 2-5 Power cards, but that's about it. I think it's a bit intentional, to imitate Magic's variance and land count factoring in deckbuilding, but it's not perfect.

It does leave them a lot of design space to play with (discarding gas to get Power, discarding Power to get gas, etc), and they could even do some behind-the-scenes stuff to help smooth out draws, so it's not entirely negative. The Influence system does a lot to help, and some of the factions have their own ways of fixing (and everyone has access to Seek Power for thinning). Again, not perfect, but I honestly prefer it over Hearthstone, for example, although a middle ground would be great. Maybe some kind of "Once per game, you can set your next two draws to be Power or not-Power" kind of thing, off the top of my head.

Elblanco
May 26, 2008

standard.deviant posted:

Rakano Warcry is a more reasonable starting deck. Big Combrei has something like 15 legendaries (4 each Knight-Chancellor, Titan, Ironthorn, 3 Mystics).

Yea, I'm planning on ranako first, and use that to earn gold and stuff to build combrei later. Though I did pull s mystic in my first booster, so I'm already on my way haha.

ThePeavstenator
Dec 18, 2012

:burger::burger::burger::burger::burger:

Establish the Buns

:burger::burger::burger::burger::burger:

Megasabin posted:

I've been watching streamers play this. The failure of land based CCGs to properly use digital mechanics to mitigate lovely draws is baffling to me. Bad hands/draws in land based CCGs lead to very unrewarding random gameplay.

They borrowed Hex's smart land system, but opted not to use a replace mechanic as well. If you are using lands, you better have multiple systems in place to mitigate mana flood/screw. Otherwise you've wasted the potential of a digital platform, and kept around an age old issue that is incredibly unappealing.

They also have cards that will transform into creatures after you reach a certain amount of power as another form of flood protection. They definitely did a good job of trying to prevent mana flood/screw without removing variance or the need to properly build your deck.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!

Serperoth posted:

There is some mitigation in Eternal, when you mulligan, the redrawn hand is guaranteed to have 2-5 Power cards, but that's about it. I think it's a bit intentional, to imitate Magic's variance and land count factoring in deckbuilding, but it's not perfect.

It does leave them a lot of design space to play with (discarding gas to get Power, discarding Power to get gas, etc), and they could even do some behind-the-scenes stuff to help smooth out draws, so it's not entirely negative. The Influence system does a lot to help, and some of the factions have their own ways of fixing (and everyone has access to Seek Power for thinning). Again, not perfect, but I honestly prefer it over Hearthstone, for example, although a middle ground would be great. Maybe some kind of "Once per game, you can set your next two draws to be Power or not-Power" kind of thing, off the top of my head.

The middle ground is putting something like a replace in. Once per turn you can replace one card in your hand with a random draw from your deck. Duelyst and Spellweaver had it, and I'm not sure why it isn't a standard now.


ThePeavstenator posted:

They also have cards that will transform into creatures after you reach a certain amount of power as another form of flood protection. They definitely did a good job of trying to prevent mana flood/screw without removing variance or the need to properly build your deck.

Variance is a nebulous concept. It only enhances the gameplay when done right. Getting a lovely hand due to land imbalance does not impact the game in any positive way whatsoever.



All the mechanisms you guys mentioned seemed neat, but I saw a whole lot of people getting too much or too little land while watching streams yesterday, and it led to games ending fast.

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



ThePeavstenator posted:

They also have cards that will transform into creatures after you reach a certain amount of power as another form of flood protection. They definitely did a good job of trying to prevent mana flood/screw without removing variance or the need to properly build your deck.

Oh I'd forgotten about the monuments, that's another good one.

Megasabin posted:

The middle ground is putting something like a replace in. Once per turn you can replace one card in your hand with a random draw from your deck. Duelyst and Spellweaver had it, and I'm not sure why it isn't a standard now.

Variance is a nebulous concept. It only enhances the gameplay when done right. Getting a lovely hand due to land imbalance does not impact the game in any positive way whatsoever.

All the mechanisms you guys mentioned seemed neat, but I saw a whole lot of people getting too much or too little land while watching streams yesterday, and it led to games ending fast.

I don't like replacement as a mechanic, especially not once per turn (Gitaxian Probe in Magic is that, with an actual cost, and it's a card absolutely worth the 4 slots in decks that want it).

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

Serperoth posted:

Draft's where it's at, I haven't done more than one or two Forges. Worth doing the free one, but I wouldn't recommend focusing on it, off the top of my head.

The rankup chests for going 7-X are two packs and 1000g now, so it's well worth playing Forge until you can't anymore (ie, until it gets too hard). Especially since early on you're unlikely to be good enough at draft to get into gold chests. Once you are at Master Forge and good enough at draft to expect at least 3 or so wins, then yeah, just chain Drafts and play Ranked when you can't afford a Draft.

Speaking of which, after my first five drafts went 0-3 or 1-3, I drafted maybe the most unfair deck I have seen and went 7-1, feels good.

The game is super generous with free stuff. I'd have thrown money at it by now if I could, but even without that I have been playing about a month and have built pretty much every Tier 1 or 2 deck except Combrei, plus Clockroaches, Flight School, Echoscavate, and a couple other wacky Tier Fun decks.

quote:

There is some mitigation in Eternal, when you mulligan, the redrawn hand is guaranteed to have 2-5 Power cards, but that's about it. I think it's a bit intentional, to imitate Magic's variance and land count factoring in deckbuilding, but it's not perfect.

There's also Monuments, Seek Power, manafixing Strangers, X's Favor, various Time dudes that fetch power.

JoshTheStampede fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Nov 7, 2016

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



JoshTheStampede posted:

The rankup chests for going 7-X are two packs and 1000g now, so it's well worth playing Forge until you can't anymore (ie, until it gets too hard). Especially since early on you're unlikely to be good enough at draft to get into gold chests. Once you are at Master Forge and good enough at draft to expect at least 3 or so wins, then yeah, just chain Drafts and play Ranked when you can't afford a Draft.

Speaking of which, after my first five drafts went 0-3 or 1-3, I drafted maybe the most unfair deck I have seen and went 7-1, feels good.

The game is super generous with free stuff. I'd have thrown money at it by now if I could, but even without that I have been playing about a month and have built pretty much every Tier 1 or 2 deck except Combrei, plus Clockroaches, Flight School, Echoscavate, and a couple other wacky Tier Fun decks.


There's also Monuments, Seek Power, manafixing Strangers, X's Favor, various Time dudes that fetch power.

Oh nice I didn't know that about Forge. So yeah, it might be good to win it a few times then :v: Still wouldn't recommend focusing on it, but yeah.

Also, going 7-X in Draft is such a good feeling. Done it once, with a relatively fair deck, but I have such an appreciation for Finest Hour after that. And a sigh of relief when my Augmented Form (with a Finest Hour in hand) didn't lead me to getting blown out.

I've been playing for about as much, without destroying anything (except stuff I already have 5 copies of), and I've made Stonescar Jito, Rakano Warcry, and 10k in the bank, and that's still after making a Clockroaches-esque Gauntlet deck.

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal
I'm really enjoying Forge as something to play while I'm listening to podcasts. I've played three now, won them all and ranked up to gold. How high do the ranks go, how hard does the AI get, and do the rewards get significantly worse?

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

CubeTheory posted:

I'm really enjoying Forge as something to play while I'm listening to podcasts. I've played three now, won them all and ranked up to gold. How high do the ranks go, how hard does the AI get, and do the rewards get significantly worse?

It goes Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Master. Once you're at master the 7th win changes from a rank-up chest to a 3rd gold chest. The AI gets pretty good but not unbeatable.

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal
If I were only interested in playing Forge, if I kept winning would it be sustainable, or would I start to fall off hard as far as currency goes? What is the best way to just earn currency in this game so I can keep forging?

Locke Dunnegan
Apr 25, 2005

Respectable Bespectacled Receptacle

Megasabin posted:

The middle ground is putting something like a replace in. Once per turn you can replace one card in your hand with a random draw from your deck. Duelyst and Spellweaver had it, and I'm not sure why it isn't a standard now.


Variance is a nebulous concept. It only enhances the gameplay when done right. Getting a lovely hand due to land imbalance does not impact the game in any positive way whatsoever.



All the mechanisms you guys mentioned seemed neat, but I saw a whole lot of people getting too much or too little land while watching streams yesterday, and it led to games ending fast.

I agree with this. They already put constraints on land/gas balance by requiring 25 power in a deck, but they can get under the hood and enforce that ratio throughout the entire deck upon the initial shuffle. It's pretty silly that it doesn't, as not doing so only causes those bullshit edge cases that aren't fun for either player.

Elblanco
May 26, 2008

CubeTheory posted:

I'm really enjoying Forge as something to play while I'm listening to podcasts. I've played three now, won them all and ranked up to gold. How high do the ranks go, how hard does the AI get, and do the rewards get significantly worse?

I wish I could get that far in forge. I've ranked up once and keep getting screwed over. I usually get flooded right at the most important points of the game, while running whatever the game sets my power at. I feel like the game does that in all the AI based formats, since it happens to me in my baby rakano warcry deck in the gauntlet too.

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal

Elblanco posted:

I wish I could get that far in forge. I've ranked up once and keep getting screwed over. I usually get flooded right at the most important points of the game, while running whatever the game sets my power at. I feel like the game does that in all the AI based formats, since it happens to me in my baby rakano warcry deck in the gauntlet too.

Don't feel too down, i have an unfathomable amount of limited experience from Magic and all of the skills transfer right over. If i didn't tear up the low level ai then it would probably be way too strong.

Elblanco
May 26, 2008

CubeTheory posted:

Don't feel too down, i have an unfathomable amount of limited experience from Magic and all of the skills transfer right over. If i didn't tear up the low level ai then it would probably be way too strong.

Well I feel better now. One of the reasons I wanted to play this game was to practice limited in general. I've always been poo poo at drafting.

Phrosphor
Feb 25, 2007

Urbanisation

Whats a good way to deal with warcry? If you don't kill their one and two drops then their creatures get very big very quickly. Shadow seems to be the only colour with lots of unconditional removal.

Are there any other Wrath effects apart from Harsh Rule?

I also so a really interesting tooltip that said that if you have a relic weapon with a keyword, then ALL your damage gets that keyword applied. That seems to be a very interesting mechanic.

Elblanco
May 26, 2008

Phrosphor posted:

Whats a good way to deal with warcry? If you don't kill their one and two drops then their creatures get very big very quickly. Shadow seems to be the only colour with lots of unconditional removal.

Are there any other Wrath effects apart from Harsh Rule?

I also so a really interesting tooltip that said that if you have a relic weapon with a keyword, then ALL your damage gets that keyword applied. That seems to be a very interesting mechanic.

I know there's lightning storm in primal, which does two damage to all units i think, and then shadow has a spell that gives all enemy units -1/-1. That hits most of warcry decks, before warcry buffs.

Elyv
Jun 14, 2013



Phrosphor posted:

Whats a good way to deal with warcry? If you don't kill their one and two drops then their creatures get very big very quickly. Shadow seems to be the only colour with lots of unconditional removal.

Are there any other Wrath effects apart from Harsh Rule?

I also so a really interesting tooltip that said that if you have a relic weapon with a keyword, then ALL your damage gets that keyword applied. That seems to be a very interesting mechanic.

Blue has pyroclasm and shadow has a 3 mana opponent's creatures get -1/-1

JoshTheStampede
Sep 8, 2004

come at me bro

CubeTheory posted:

If I were only interested in playing Forge, if I kept winning would it be sustainable, or would I start to fall off hard as far as currency goes? What is the best way to just earn currency in this game so I can keep forging?

You can't go infinite in Forge forever, no. Before master, best case is 4 gold chests plus 1k gold, which is enough to pay for the next one. But after Master it's 3 golds, which is only 1500 gold so you'll have a shortfall unless you get lucky with chests upgrading.

Ranked and dailies is the easiest way to make gold between runs.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!
I decided to give this a go despite my reservations. So I have to do 20 tutorial quests before other quests will unlock? Holy poo poo, what a slog.

Edit: They don't even teach you anything new after the first campaign. They really just want you to sit there for an hour hitting next turn on 20 missions.

Megasabin fucked around with this message at 06:32 on Nov 8, 2016

Phrosphor
Feb 25, 2007

Urbanisation

Megasabin posted:

I decided to give this a go despite my reservations. So I have to do 20 tutorial quests before other quests will unlock? Holy poo poo, what a slog.

Completing all the tutorials is intended to introduce you to each of the colour archetypes which are familiar but different if you are coming from mtg. The reward is a legendary for each colour. I believe most people dust them straight away to craft decks

CubeTheory
Mar 26, 2010

Cube Reversal
Alright, just beat gold in the forge and got to Diamond. Thinking about drafting soon. Do you get a free draft? I read that you do but I don't seem to have one.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!

Phrosphor posted:

Completing all the tutorials is intended to introduce you to each of the colour archetypes which are familiar but different if you are coming from mtg. The reward is a legendary for each colour. I believe most people dust them straight away to craft decks

20 games is very excessive. The game is not rocket science. They also put 0 effort into those quests. There's no teaching going on or anything. It's literally just mash next turn 100 times.

Megasabin fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Nov 8, 2016

Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Phrosphor posted:


I also so a really interesting tooltip that said that if you have a relic weapon with a keyword, then ALL your damage gets that keyword applied. That seems to be a very interesting mechanic.

I think that the keyword applies to only your weapon damage. If I play a Sword of Icaria, doesn't give all my units Warcry. Could be wrong though, if you come across the tip again let us know.


Megasabin posted:

20 games is very excessive. The game is not rocket science. They also put 0 effort into those quests. There's no teaching going on or anything. It's literally just mash next turn 100 times.

Yeah, they should make 4/5 of the factions optional as far as tutorials go, I think. Pick a faction at the start, play its 4-5 games, get started with the proper game, but still have the option to do the others down the line

Elblanco
May 26, 2008

CubeTheory posted:

Alright, just beat gold in the forge and got to Diamond. Thinking about drafting soon. Do you get a free draft? I read that you do but I don't seem to have one.

No free drafts, but you should have a quest to finish a draft that gives you a diamond chest

Locke Dunnegan
Apr 25, 2005

Respectable Bespectacled Receptacle

Serperoth posted:

I think that the keyword applies to only your weapon damage. If I play a Sword of Icaria, doesn't give all my units Warcry. Could be wrong though, if you come across the tip again let us know.

I think they meant player damage, so spells. Overwhelm definitely works on that 6/3 weapon and a Torch, so yeah I think stuff like Deadly should work the same. Before I stopped playing I saw a homebrew Shadow control deck that used the Deadly weapon and that Witch that sets opposing units to 1 health to each let Harbinger clear board.

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Serperoth
Feb 21, 2013



Locke Dunnegan posted:

I think they meant player damage, so spells. Overwhelm definitely works on that 6/3 weapon and a Torch, so yeah I think stuff like Deadly should work the same. Before I stopped playing I saw a homebrew Shadow control deck that used the Deadly weapon and that Witch that sets opposing units to 1 health to each let Harbinger clear board.

Oh wow that seems awesome. And it makes sense, by giving YOU the ability.

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