Cactus Game Design Message Boards

After all this time, speed is still too powerful, Dominants are still horribly imba, and tiny standalone defenses are still too effective. Perhaps these cards would do something about them.

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

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."

David the Warrior
12/8 Red Hero, WC
-King of Israel, Musician, Prophet-
"Negate one Site. If your opponent has more Redeemed Souls than you, Ignore one Demon, one O.T. Human Evil Character and all Evil Characters in hand. Set the top card of opponent's deck aside for 3 turns."

David the Prophet
2/2 Green Hero, WC
-King of Israel, Musician, Prophet, X=Number of Dominants in opponent's Discard Pile-
"Negate one Site. Search deck for X O.T. non-Dominants. Shuffle one Evil Character of each brigade."

David the Minstrel
2/7 White Hero, WC
-King of Israel, Musician, Prophet-
"May play an Enhancement involving music. If you have fewer redeemed souls than opponent, card may come from Storehouse or a Discard Pile."

David the King
11/11 Purple Hero, WC
-King of Israel, Musician, Prophet-
"Ignore Evil royalty. Negate Special Abilities on Evil Characters. Protect all characters from banding and Discard."


My question to you is, would any of these accidentally speed? I don't want to be responsible for another Gifts of the Magi or Mayhem.

Yeah, David the Prophet seems a tad strong, especially if you use like confusion or something to put an opponents dominant into the discard pile.

Sealed Scroll seems like a good idea at first glance, but I know that it's broken. Picture a speed deck setting aside 8 cards from their deck, so now I get 8 cards further though a 40 card deck, and suddenly I've had 2-3 turns of not needing to worry about your CM/DoN/Falling Away, and I get the doms right back since I'm so speedy. I'd make it so you get them back when your opponent hits a card number - the trick would be wording it so that it works in multi.

Pharoah is just killer for herolite, a first turn David the Warrior is going to rescue at least one soul provided one is out (with a great chance for more), and Asking for Signs is just ridiculous. It makes playing 3 dominants non-viable. Put it on my EC, throw that EC in Kotw. Throw Destructive Sin on one of your heroes (to stop I am Whatever that red one is). What do you do?

I'm not saying limiting dominants is bad, but wrecking everything except Sog/NJ is not good.

See that's the thing. Even with these cards you're still fine running Doms, just not a ton of them. GoyS, SoG/NJ AotL and CM wouldn't even trigger Asking for Signs. You could even throw in another 2 and save SoG/NJ for 4 and 5. I don't have a problem with all Doms, and I think this game would be in a bad place without some of them, but when almost every deck runs SoG, NJ, FA, GoyS, Burial, CM, AotL, HT, Grapes and Mayhem, that's nearly 30% of all decks exactly the same accounting for LS's. I don't hate doms, I just don't think there should be zero drawback for running a ton of them.

*EDIT* Toned down David and fixed the issues. How's it look now?

Rebalanced for T2.

What does playing dominants have to do with Unto the Least?

I haven't played much with Disciples but from what I've seen and heard dominants aren't much of a problem so why are you trying to nerf them? 

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.

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.

Golden Vessels is a speed card... isn't that what you are trying to discourage? At that, it's WAY too good of a speed card.

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

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.

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

I like just about all of them.

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.

Thankfully, we wouldn't even have to put CBN on it, since the art discards itself, it isn't around to be targeted for a negate anyway