Cactus Game Design Message Boards

I'm wanting to make a bunch of new card ideas, and I want to devote some attention to the least powerful themes. Please list any themes you think are under-powered. If you explain why, your vote counts double. I'll start:

Syrians. The entire theme is predicated on capture, yet it has no way of getting rid of the bountiful, oft-used "protect from Capture" cards. It's also severely lacking in the character department, boasting only one great character (Namaan) and two or three good characters (Hazel, Cusham-whatever, and Antiochus) and only a couple other characters period.

Assyrians. I'm not quite sure what's wrong with them. On paper, they should be good. Solid characters (nothing really super-fantastic though, now that I think of it), good Enhancements, and one of the best protection forts. I suppose they suffer from lack of CBN, difficulty with initiative (especially now that Horses are weaker than ever), and a lack of really good EC's.

Royalty. The main reason it fell this set is that pretty much everything else got a HUGE boost while O.T. Purple got nothing. It also doesn't help that CBIgnored is running wild and much of Royalty's battle-winning power came from Ignore. Still has baller characters, but leaves a LOT to be desired in the Enhancement department.

Angels. I don't think this one really needs to be explained. It's gotten, what, five or six really good cards since Kings? Even then, only Striking Herod is super special awesome (Birth Foretold really helps Green and Gold more). A glut of AMAZING characters, near-invincibility with Chamber and a few other support cards, and HUGE problems with initiative to play a small pool of useful Enhancements. The Silver Brigade is loaded with goodness, but most of it is better served contributing to a different, main offense rather than standing on its own. Silver just needs some good Enhancements and inter-Brigade banding.

Tally:
Syrians - 2
Assyrians - 2
Royalty - 2
Angels - 2

What say ye?

I agree on all counts,
maybe add Judges

One NT theme that could be explored for Blue would be an Acts theme. Barnabas, Mark, Silas, Aquila and Claudia exist but could be reprinted, and Luke, Apollos, Priscilla, Timothy and Matthias reprinted in blue with useful SAs. Finding a few more Acts heroes shouldn't be difficult. I'm just going off the top of my head, but there may well be more possibilities. (I didn't check the verses on all of these, but they could all be referenced in Acts.)

Musicians got a boost with the hymns, and I personally have a nice NT musician hero who recurs them (custom hero from Nats), but I agree that musicians straight up have few battle winners.I'm going to see how they work out in my new deck. Also, there are two female musicians, Miriam and Deborah.

My son plays straight up silver, and does fairly well with it. The theme builds around the monster heroes, but the enhancements are not terribly powerful. (The enhancement issue also affects demons, but GoH, banding, and immunity to conversion  help make up for it.) And while angels aren't totally immune to capture/conversion, the fact that so may of those cards that are used specify "human hero" makes some defenses (hello, my Babylonians!) weak against them. (Yes, I know the Babs have fixes, and I have already tweaked them.)

I would concur on Syrians, mainly due to their lack of characters. Gray has some excellent "generic" enhancements, though.

I've seen Assyrians work, but they could use some help.

I haven't seen anyone play a straight up royalty theme. There's probably a reason for that.

For all that I like toying around with red warrior decks, I never see them played, either. I have never found one that works out the way I want. so I suspect they could use some better enhancements. (At least red now has site access heroes.)

Daniel heroes could still use some help. The promo Daniel next year at Nats will help some. (Here;s a theme that silver will help.)

Teal - While ZT is still a pretty good theme, you can't deny that Teal has not gotten much boost in the last few sets. It's not necessarily that it's bad (although a non-ZT priests deck is almost guaranteed to fail miserably). It simply does not have enough cards. In fact I believe teal has the smallest card bank of any of the brigades right now. We need to give ST and Tabernacle priests a few sweet characters and theme-specific enhancements, as well as stuff to make them stronger when their respective fortresses are out.

Green - New theme, PLEASE.

Red - I'm pretty happy with the last set. It didn't give red much, but it mostly solved its biggest problem, which was initiative. However, I think it has a new problem: demons. Both of the new red enhancements, as well as red's only CBN enhancement, effect humans exclusively. Sure, you have The Master's Table now, but red only has one convert enhancement. (And how many times do you want to convert your own EC's anyway?) Still possibly the weakest brigade IMO.

Gold - Luke heroes are just fine now, but c'mon, Judges have gotten nothing since RoA. They aren't that far away from being a great theme; their enhancements are fine and all, and Judge's Seat is great, but they really just need a few more characters.

White - Musicians need CHARACTERS. There are only 5 white musicians, and then a bunch scattered all over the place. Musicians got a bunch of Hymns in the last set (one of which was a battle-winner, which is good), but they really don't make me want to play a Musician deck. Most of them are too specific, except maybe Passover Hymn.

Also Daniel heroes. I'm very excited about the new Daniel, but Daniel heroes still need more. A convertable Nebuchadnezzar would be cool. That one eunuch could be a hero, too. And we could definitely make some new angels.

Purple - Royalty's characters are good, but it needs battle-winners.

Blue - Deacons Deacons Deacons. More Job awesomeness would be cool as well. But NO MORE GENESIS EVER!

Silver - Uh, yeahhhhh...silver's stink is getting old. If the playtesters want silver to be a support brigade, let's go that direction full force. Like an angel that says "next turn, your humans are invincible." THEN I might consider combining angels with humans.


Black - Only one Greek character in the last set. It needs some enhancements, too. Let's start a forced drawing theme here, and how about an awesome fortress?

Gray - Basically the Syrain capture problem. It doesn't need much, just some anti-protection! (And some character variety.)

Gold - With all the anti-ignore in the last set, you would think that Egyptians might get some. But no, they still have Journey to Egypt and Miriam to worry about. And deck d/c just isn't very powerful. In fact, I can't see that it got any boost in the last set.

Pale Green - Assyrains' biggest problem seems to be initiative. I like The Rabshakeh's Threats a ton, but I would still like to see some low-number characters to play some of PG's awesome enhancements.

Brown - I actually have nothing to say about brown. All of its themes are pretty good. I would focus the least amount of attention on this brigade.

Crimson - More Heretics, and NO MORE BABS!

Orange - Very powerful now, but I would still like to see some possession, and more bottom-of-the-deck support. This is probably my favorite brigade.


Sorry, that wasn't exactly what you asked for. Here's a list summary:

Deacons
Non-ZT priests
Musicians
Angels
Judges
Daniel Heroes
Royalty

Greeks
Heretics
Syrians
Assyrians

TGT is under powered. It may have swept NC Regionals, but it didn't win nats!

I disagree that judges is a weak theme.  To me, they are the sniper team of redemption.  They can take out an evil character each turn with their seat and wipe out their opponentks protection fortress with SS.  They are not meant to rush in for the win.  They stay back and take out your defense before they come in for the rescue.

One thing I would like to see are more cards like WONL.  It was a great start to help heroes with no sa but they need more cards to help them (and maybe cards to help non-sa EC)

Right now, Judges have some really good Enhancements, crappy characters, and a lot of sniping capabilities. Judges wreck face with standalone defenses. Unfortunately, with the release of Di, so does every other offense, so Judges have kind of lost their edge.

By unplayable, it looks like you are saying that these three do not need anymore help right now.

I would also like to see FBTN become a viable strategy, since it feels like the only banding that works is Jacob-CotH and Philistines, but even then those FBTN banding chains aren't very strong. IMO, FBTN should definitely be a strong strategy since the new players will more likely be drawn to it instead of all that stupid pre-block ignore and technical stuff. However, play-first cards such as Hidden Treasure and N's Horses/Chariots are able to be gotten rid of fairly easily.

Quote from: Smokey on September 02, 2010, 05:35:24 PM

Non-ZT priests Trumpet and Sword /nuffsaid

No, I do believe much more needs to be said.

Pretty sure you can make a fairly sucessful deck using Ahimaaz, Phineas, T&S and Zeal as a base. The same can't be said for many of the other themes I listed.

To smokey:

My reply was meant to say that pharasees and ot EC are not unplayable.  Ot peeps have all the civies and sme sweet sitelock cards.

As for judges, I used them with a splash of red and a sitelock defense at nats 09.  If it wasn't for the time limit, I would of won two of my three timed out games (since they already used their sog/nj and I had them locked out (one timed game was tied and was anyone's game).  As for the strength of the judges, the last game I played with that deck, they destroyed my fortresses right off the bat and I was still able to win.

Of course, I have no idea what the latest booster has done to sitelock/sniper tactics.

I'm wanting to make a bunch of new card ideas, and I want to devote some attention to the least powerful themes. Please list any themes you think are under-powered. If you explain why, your vote counts double. I'll start:

Syrians. The entire theme is predicated on capture, yet it has no way of getting rid of the bountiful, oft-used "protect from Capture" cards. It's also severely lacking in the character department, boasting only one great character (Namaan) and two or three good characters (Hazel, Cusham-whatever, and Antiochus) and only a couple other characters period.

Assyrians. I'm not quite sure what's wrong with them. On paper, they should be good. Solid characters (nothing really super-fantastic though, now that I think of it), good Enhancements, and one of the best protection forts. I suppose they suffer from lack of CBN, difficulty with initiative (especially now that Horses are weaker than ever), and a lack of really good EC's.

Royalty. The main reason it fell this set is that pretty much everything else got a HUGE boost while O.T. Purple got nothing. It also doesn't help that CBIgnored is running wild and much of Royalty's battle-winning power came from Ignore. Still has baller characters, but leaves a LOT to be desired in the Enhancement department.

Angels. I don't think this one really needs to be explained. It's gotten, what, five or six really good cards since Kings? Even then, only Striking Herod is super special awesome (Birth Foretold really helps Green and Gold more). A glut of AMAZING characters, near-invincibility with Chamber and a few other support cards, and HUGE problems with initiative to play a small pool of useful Enhancements. The Silver Brigade is loaded with goodness, but most of it is better served contributing to a different, main offense rather than standing on its own. Silver just needs some good Enhancements and inter-Brigade banding.

Tally:
Syrians - 2
Assyrians - 2
Royalty - 2
Angels - 2

What say ye?

No Teal ? ~ Why is teal powerful?

Egyptians need more enhancements.