View Single Post
  #57  
Old July 23rd, 2017, 10:22 PM
Ronin's Avatar
Ronin Ronin is offline
Symbiotic
 
Join Date: November 17, 2008
Location: USA - MA - Boston
Posts: 21,917
Images: 22
Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death! Ronin is hot lava death!
Re: The Spellbook of Temporal Inversion

Reposted from the spell testing thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Viegon View Post
Army Test 1
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Doctor Fate, Malekith, Ms. Marvel; Final Ruin x1, Weapon of Destiny x8, Condemn x2, Flames of the Faltine x2, Bolts of Balthakk x2, Images of Ikonn x1 (955 points) VS Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Thing, Jocasta (955 points)
Spoiler Alert!

___________________________________________________________

Army Test 2
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Doctor Fate, Malekith, Ms. Marvel; Weapon of Destiny x8, Condemn x2, Flames of the Faltine x1, Bolts of Balthakk x2, Images of Ikonn x2 (955 points) VS Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, the Thing, Jocasta (955 points)
Spoiler Alert!

___________________________________________________________

Army Test 3
Map: Mysterious Crash Site (a custom RotVx1/TJ x1/VW x1 map) (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Enchantress, Black Panther, Swordsman, Robin (Dick); Vapors of Valtorr x4, Weapon of Destiny x6, Images of Ikonn x2, Bolts of Balthakk x2 (990 points) VS Martian Manhunter (II), Captain Mar-Vell, Starman (Jack Knight) (990 points)
Spoiler Alert!

___________________________________________________________

Army Test 4
Map: Mysterious Crash Site (a custom RotVx1/TJ x1/VW x1 map) (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Enchantress, Black Panther, Deadshot, Robin (Dick); Vapors of Valtorr x5, Weapon of Destiny x9, Images of Ikonn x1 (1,000 points) VS GL John Stewart, Vertigo, Valkyrie, Zombie, GC Decoy x2 (1,000 points)
Spoiler Alert!


___________________________________________________________

Army Test 5
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Graviton, Malekith, War Machine; Vapors of Valtorr x4, Images of Ikonn x1 (1,000 points) VS Professor X, Jean Grey, Deadpool, Blink, Beast (1,000 points)
Spoiler Alert!

___________________________________________________________

Army Test 6
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Graviton, Malekith, War Machine; Vapors of Valtorr x3, Images of Ikonn x2, Condemn x1, Weapon of Destiny x1 (1,000 points) VS Professor X, Jean Grey, Deadpool, Blink, Beast (1,000 points)
Spoiler Alert!


___________________________________________________________

Army Test 7
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Scarlet Witch, Raven; Images of Ikonn x15, Final Ruin x1, Temporal Shift x2, Condemn x5, Vengeance x6, Bolts of Balthakk x6 (850 points) VS Cosmic Boy, Timber Wolf, Superboy (Kal-El) (850 points)
Spoiler Alert!


___________________________________________________________

Army Test 8
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Scarlet Witch, Raven; Images of Ikonn x15, Final Ruin x1, Temporal Shift x2, Condemn x5, Vengeance x6, Bolts of Balthakk x6 (850 points) VS Cosmic Boy, Timber Wolf, Superboy (Kal-El) (850 points)
Spoiler Alert!


___________________________________________________________

Army Test 9
Map: Sewer Labyrinth (no glyphs or other special rules)
Units: Scarlet Witch, Raven, Oracle; Images of Ikonn x13, Condemn x5, Vengeance x8, Bolts of Balthakk x3, Flames of the Faltine x1, Vapors of Valtorr x2 (1,000 points) VS Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, the Thing (1,000 points)
Spoiler Alert!


___________________________________________________________

GENERAL THOUGHTS: Overall, I really enjoyed playing with the spells. Very fun and fresh, with lots of interesting strategies both to army building and in game. The ruleset is clear and plays well. And, overall, I think the majority of the spells are close, but there are a few of them that need some major changes, in my opinion. I’ll go through them one by one:
1) FINAL RUIN: No issues with this one. I drafted it a couple of times but it never came up because it’s pretty niche. My only worry is that it actually gets overshadowed by some of the other offensive spells (Weapon of Destiny, Vengeance, both the SAs).
2) WEAPON OF DESTINY: This one is an issue, potentially broken. With no cap for the spells, it is way too easy to spam a huge number of these. Stack them with Enchantress’ boost, or turn Malekith or Doctor Fate into crazy good support units. I suggest bumping them to 10 points and testing them there; still might not be enough but doubling their cost is a good first step.
3) TEMPORAL SHIFT: Balance-wise, this one is fine. A lot of armies aren’t affected by it, and most of the rest can plan against it. However, I do worry that as-is it really punishes solo-hero and hodge-podge armies, while having little to no effect on factions and competitive builds. It really seems like it punishes the weak, in my opinion.
4) CONDEMN: While kind of scary with Scarlet Witch, it’s otherwise pretty niche and situational. I’d keep an eye on it, but I think it’s fine at 10 points.
5) IMAGES OF IKONN: To be blunt, this one is seriously unbalanced. Being able to auto-block an attack, after attack dice are rolled, and then teleport half-way across the map if you want is a crazy good package for 10 points. Add that to the fact that Magical Defense figures are tough already and often with some pretty killer powers, and that increasing their survivability means you can draft even more spells, and things get out of hand. Like Weapon of Destiny, you can bring just one or two MD figures and then spam a huge number of Images of Ikonn, and unless your opponent has a lot of autowounds, your MD figures are essentially unkillable for rounds on end; bring along some Vengeances, and a MD figure can walk through a lot of other armies nearly single-handedly (see games 7, 8, and 9 as examples). Personally, I’d take this one back to the drawing board; I just don’t think a defensive spell like this works, and it seriously unbalances the spell system. If we don’t want to go that far, I recommend moving the trigger to when the figure is targeted (before attack dice are rolled), cut the attack-prevention part, and maybe shorten the teleport range. That way you can jump your MD figures out of tight spots, but your opponent can still retarget if there’s a target in range (potentially the same MD figure if you can’t get them far enough away). This one needs work.
6) VENGEANCE: This one is tough. Due to its high cost and swing, I don’t think it’s unbalanced; but when played in large numbers and combined with Images of Ikonn to buy you time to use them, it’s absolutely devastating and will easily make up well over its points worth. Very few armies can hold up against the sheer amount of autowounds you can deal out when playing with a bunch of Vengeances. I’d recommend leaving this one as-is for now and seeing how it does once Images is fixed before making changes.
7) VAPORS OF VALTORR: This one is also an issue. Similar to the others, it gets crazy when you bring 3 or 4 of them with your favorite MD support unit (Enchantress, Malekith, Doctor Fate), nearly buying you a full game of anti-range support. You can of course try to combo this with other figures such as War Machine, but really, they’re unbalanced as-is when used with Enchantress, forcing your opponent to come to you and making it nearly impossible for them to avoid Soul Swap (see game 4). The easy fix would be to just make this one a Unique Spell, though there are other tweaks that can be made.
8.) FLAMES OF THE FALTINE: This one didn’t see a lot of use in my games, but I think it’s fine. Against pods or squad armies it could really shine, but outside of that it’s not going to be a whole lot of use (especially considering most MD figures have at least 4 range and 4 attack already). It is worth bringing just one or two of these to keep your opponent from being able to cluster.
9) BOLTS OF BALTHAKK: Much more consistently useful than Flames, but still not an issue at 5 points. 7 range and 5 attack is a nice upgrade for a lot of the cheaper MD figures, and gives your MD figures some nice threat range, but I don’t see it breaking anything.

I think we need to be super cautious with these spells, and the supportive ones in particular. Just like with units, passive and supportive powers tend to be the biggest issues, but unlike with a regular unit, a passive or supportive spell is usable with all of the current MD figures and all future MD figures. I’d also like to see us be careful about what we’re doing to future design space; with some of these spells (like Weapon of Destiny, Vapors of Valtorr, and Images of Ikonn), they get very exploitable when taken in large numbers, and while we could tweak their costs to limit that currently, we could very likely work ourselves into a position where we weren’t able to design lower-cost MD figures in the future without them being broken with those spells.

Again, overall I really like the spell system and most of the spells are about good as-is, but I think we need to watch them carefully and a few of them (Weapon of Destiny, Vapors of Valtorr, and Images of Ikonn in particular) are unbalanced as-is.
Reply With Quote