Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Pride (Multicolor Territory Class Evil Enhancement)

Place this on your evil character. While placed, this evil character gains the ability to taunt.

"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." Proverbs 16:18

but what would the taunt ability be? the way taunt works is there is a ability that activates if the Taunt u successful. this doesnt really give a taunt ability.

It would still allow you to activate that ECs ability and weapon, which is probably broken.  Taunting with emperors holding horses and playing Heavy Taxes so that your opponent can't present a hero?  Yes please.  Taunting with Hellenistic Jews or Phillies w/ horsies to play Wrath of Satan before a hero can be presented?  Very yes please.

I think "Arrogance" would be better than "Pride", and I think it should probably include a Prevent/Protect/Restrict to limit playing enhancements off of an unopposed Taunt.  Prevent is the easiest to do, but it won't stop Rabshakeh/2kh, Naaman with his horsies, etc.

nothing, you win by being able to enter battle with an evil character instead of making a rescue attempt just like jm said i would love it lol

i would reallllly like this card does anyone feel like it is too strong to be real?

i'm really thankful that you are just responding to this honestly i want this card so bad lol

1. cost

similarly to arrogance (the original print, which i have never seen play outside of my own experimenting), you do have to consider the cost.. which is mainly why i do not feel that it may be broken at all. crimson arrogance is simply too costly to be played effectively as a battle winning enhancement because chances are you only have 4 or 5 more that will need to be used wisely as blocks to win in t1 and it is limited to one copy in t2 being multi.

the cost in a t1 deck especially, as is, is an ee slot. sometimes ee's consist solely of battle winning enhancements. so that right there is one, on top of assuming that there is a play out of it, it is not for a lost soul, so the cards played in that battle would be for outer lying strategies which would also have to be shaped and are time consuming while realistically trying to get 5 lost souls before your opponent.

2. strategy

while yes it can be strategic to do nasty things, overall the intended strategy with being able to give any ec taunt is to be able to use their abilities while my heroes or opponent does not have lost souls to rescue, or when possibly i could generate a soul with an evil character to then turn in to a rescue attempt next turn.

3. playability

i feel like this card realistically in a t1 deck would see about a max of 3 turns played so either way with a limit or not i think it's basically just as playable in a deck with a realistic strategy on winning. same goes for t2 since it's multi it would be one of those king's pomp kind of cards where you may wind up debating on whether it makes the cut or not, but some players would find it very useful for being able to pick up occasional draws or plays between rescues.

4. brokenness

the biggest problems with auto- gideon, james-thad, and even tgt is that sometimes they leave you with the feeling that you can't do anything or that if you just had that (literally one card) to get a block you might. i like that this taunt allows evil characters to shape the terrain more where they may not be able to do so otherwise until challenged- in which case it's probably too late. i'm trying to contemplate the most broken combinations with this possibility and they pretty much are all basically variants of prevention where protection is too powerful to block. in that way i feel the brokenness is pretty balanced and therefore not necessarily broken at all. gives you the options to play your cards and move on rather than have to simply dc them since you may or may not have ever been challenged when you would have had the opportunity to do something.

5. worst case

worst case scenario you are using up evil cards not for blocking so that does open up your land of bondage to potential rescues, but on the other hand you can potentially knock out an entire offense with cards like wrath of satan, head of gold, great image, etc. assuming you can pull the horses or the band necessary to play first plus have placed Pride.. seems like about as much work as getting wheel on Michael with Angel's Sword + the enhancements to back it up and may be just as powerful. who knows!

glad to hear feedback regarding this card concept, i would love to see taunt become more playable! Goliath is sick, but he is the only ec that has Taunt!

Not rescuing is a crazy high opportunity cost. Beyond which, ET+AoCP already exists (and doesn't have that cost, can't be negated if a block from hand still exists, and doesn't need a weapon) so clearly Wrath isn't broken. Emperors with horses and heavy taxes gets you a +6 hand advantage if you have all four pieces of the combo in exchange for burning a block and not rescuing. The real worst offender would be Manasseh chains, but even then I'd be surprised if anyone came up with a use for a taunt bestowment that didn't at best make up for its opportunity and complexity cost.

people tend to play more heroes than ECs, and tend to place those heroes down to get hand size down, while keeping ECs in hand as long as possible

And maybe more cards that threaten an offense on your opponent's turn would make this more of an option to weigh than the optimal strategy in (darn near) every situation. Opposition number one is actually a point in favor!

Additionally, if you get rid of your opponent's entire defense, they can still win by rescuing souls before you get enough free souls to win, whereas if their entire offense is gone, they actually can't win.

Well darn, that's actually a valid point. Still, it's contingent on nobody including cards to protect their offense in territory (of which there are plenty, but not played because an offense is rarely threatened the way a defense is) and always dropping Heroes above any other hand management choice.

Since you made a good point, I'll make another one to hopefully keep the "taunt has to be heavily regulated" sentiment reeling: losing your entire defense means you won't have any more defense. Losing your entire offense can be rectified by Holy Grail. While normally I shy from using cards that are already far too widely-used in my pro arguments, in this case it's actually providing another calculation you have to make as opposed to an automatic decision. Do I convert that EC over there or do I sit on the Grail in case my offense gets taunted?

In my T2 experience, losing my entire defense is almost always worse than losing my offence. If I don't have offence I can just wait a turn or two to get another hero, while my defense holds the line, if I lose my defense I have to hope I can either draw something new or can in by racing. I actually like the idea of hitting my opponent's offence like they can hit my defense. But this is just my first impression and I haven't considered everythi.

Here's the card image: