Cactus Game Design Message Boards

Syrians of Damascus
10/10 Gray EC, WC
-Generic, X = # of your Syrians-
"Reveal the top X cards of deck. You may add to hand all revealed evil cards. If Damascus is in play, negate play abilities. Cannot be interrupted."
~II Samuel 8:5

Thirty-Three Thousand Men
12/12 Gray EC, WC
-Generic, Syrian-
"If you have 3 or more Syrians in play, and all your evil characters are Syrian, protect Syrians from opponents. Cannot be interrupted."
~II Samuel 10:6

Hadarezer
7/10 Gray EC, WC
-Syrian King, X = # of your Syrians-
"You may exchange a card in hand with a Syrian in deck to protect up to X OT Lost Souls from rescue. Cannot be negated if Shobach is in play."
~II Samuel 10:16

Damascus
Blue Site
-Syrian-
"This Site may hold one Lost Soul for each Syrian in play. When you block with a Syrian, you may remove a Lost Soul from this Site to draw a card."
~II Samuel 8:5

33 Thousand Men is ridiculously overpowered. There's not even really any way it couldn't been seen as okay. I would change it to "If at any time during battle there are three or more Syrians in battle..." which, depending on the type of banding cards gray has (I really don't know), should theoretically be okay. Hadarezer is also quite overpowered. You can't really give possibly CBN protection of Lost Souls without a cost. I would say if you're discarding a card to search deck for a Syrian to protect, that would be okay.

I think 33 thousand men should say something like Assyrian Siege Army. I like Syrians of damascus though.

33,000 is way OP the game is practically over once you get out three syrians and with the speed there it today that isn't hard. Syrians have great banding and that is the only thing you could do to get by it.

I like how an evil character that requires 2 other evil characters from the same theme to get bulletproof status is oh noes SO OP yet one angel to one s/a-less hero (that the angel can search deck for) granting bulletproof status is not. I will say again that I think offenses are too powerful and that the root cause of the speed/drawing epidemic is to accomplish getting these OP offensive cards faster. The easiest way I can see to balance that is not to try and curb speed (because it doesn't work) but to make defenses stronger.

The angel under the oak and gideon together are terrible, and I don't think there should ever be CBN protect from everything, but at least there you can still do things to win the battle, like say protect lost souls from rescue, or use an end the battle card with your numbers being greater or something like that and he's still only a 6/6 and a stalemate or protecting lost souls from rescue still stops the rescue attempt.  Having a 12/12 evil character CBN protected from everything is entirely broken since there is absolutely NO way to win the battle against it.  You can't beat it by the numbers (since its just protected from your numbers anyway), and you can't remove it from battle. 

The angel under the oak and gideon together are terrible, and I don't think there should ever be CBN protect from everything, but at least there you can still do things to win the battle, like say protect lost souls from rescue, or use an end the battle card with your numbers being greater or something like that and he's still only a 6/6 and a stalemate or protecting lost souls from rescue still stops the rescue attempt.  Having a 12/12 evil character CBN protected from everything is entirely broken since there is absolutely NO way to win the battle against it.  You can't beat it by the numbers (since its just protected from your numbers anyway), and you can't remove it from battle. 

And that's a bad thing why? CBN battle winners do the same thing, you can't win the battle after those are played, so what's the difference? Defenses need more power if the game is ever going to balance out.

I really wouldn't call this unstoppable. I will consider either changing it to 3 in battle or CBI (rather than CBN) but I really don't think it's necessary. If it means Syrians become another viable defense in this meta then I think it will have accomplished more good than harm. Diversity in choice of decks is never a bad thing.

Angel Under the Oak + Gideon is different for a couple reasons. First off, Gideon is only a 6/6. Unless you play something to raise his numbers significantly, he can be beaten. Heck, even Hezekiah, who can become a 9/11 CBN protected hero, is quite manageable. A 12/12 Evil Character that's protected on the other hand, is not manageable, especially not when you consider that Syrians have a couple banding cards. The other reason is that protection is fundamentally different for offense and defense. For a protected Hero, that means that while that Hero cannot be killed, he still has to do something to kill his opponent(s) for a victory. A protected EC just has to exist. Since that EC cannot be touched by enhancements, dominants, or anything else in the game, and they have infinite defense, it makes an beatable auto-block every single time. As already mentioned, Syrians even have a protect fort, so he would be protected in territory as well.

House of Rimmon doesn't protect from everything. Convert him or any of the other 2 Syrians and, oh look, no more protection in battle. Or use one of the many fort killers in the game to get rid of House and then do whatever you want to him. There are plentiful ways of getting around this, I don't anticipate the ability getting more than 2 blocks before any of the current offenses can get rid of him.

Most decks I've ever seen don't use in territory conversion (because you know with your current wording of the card, you couldn't hit any syrians while your in battle) and not everything has fort destruction, and even if you kill the fort, you have to have territory destruction in your deck anyway.  The card is broken, its a simple as that, and your never going to be able to convince me or a lot of other people otherwise.

Changed the ability to CBI instead of CBN for all you whiners.

Most decks I've ever seen don't use in territory conversion (because you know with your current wording of the card, you couldn't hit any syrians while your in battle) and not everything has fort destruction, and even if you kill the fort, you have to have territory destruction in your deck anyway.  The card is broken, its a simple as that, and your never going to be able to convince me or a lot of other people otherwise.

I know it's worded so Syrians are protected while he's in battle, that's the whole point....

It's not my fault you don't run territory conversion, lol. It just means you'd be unprepared to deal with this card. That is completely and entirely the fault of the deck-builder for not adding counters to something like this, not me for designing the card this way.

You're vastly underestimating this I think. Uzzah is considered one of the best ECs in the game, and that's because he's an autoblock, even though he has a cost. You're talking about at least one autoblock, and more than likely more unless your opponent is using Luke or Holy Grail. The point I'm trying to make is that, unless every offense techs for Syrians, and adds fort discard and conversion (the latter of which can be compensated for with Altar of Dagon, with Temple of Dagon so you don't waste an artifact slot).

TGT came out, defenses started having to tech for territory protection and not keeping blockers all in hand anymore. Thad came out, people had to tech for character ability prevention. This would be no different.

Exactly, it would be no different. People hate TGT, and people hate Thad. I don't believe any strategy in the game should have to be teched for, unless you're specifically building an anti-meta deck.

This I entirely agree with this.  There should be no strategy so powerful you have to specifically tech for it or you can do nothing.

Sorry, let me rephrase: No theme should specifically have to be teched for.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, it just needs reworked, because as it stands, it's a bit overpowered. In fact, I love the idea of designing a whole defense around the idea that, the more cards in that defense that you have in play, the stronger the defense is. It would be great to encourage larger defenses like that.

All I need in my opening draw is this, two other Syrians, HoR and DoN to pop any potential Grails, and I'm set.  I'd make it CBI.

It's far more possible in T2.  This and ANB reset FTW.


Whoops, somehow I thought it was CBN.