Quote:
Originally Posted by flameslayer93
Itharial looks cool, but is probably a touch undercosted. Being able to sling any amount of dice on a bonded turn is already good, but being able to sling up to 20 dice in a turn is massive, and I personally wouldn’t care to have him leave engagement with a few figures to pull it off against something that really doesn’t like getting hit. Who cares if he dies when he basically obliterates a big expensive hero?
Personally though, I’d drop his life and/or defense to 4 to make it less unfun fighting him. It’s good that he’s fun to play, but not good if he’s unfun to play against.
Great design overall! The drawback mechanic is cool!
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It's certainly possible that he should cost more. I'd need to get more testing to have a strong feeling one way or the other. While 20 dice in a turn is theoretically great, the issue is that he can't attack the same figure more than once with Blue Sword of Speed, so he has to be able to get next to 4 figures worth killing, which can be tricky in practice, particularly since he only has 5 move.
The single attack of ten dice is better for taking out an opponent's big expensive hero, but even that attack isn't likely to be a one-shot on anything around Ithariel's point cost. You might put 4 wounds on your opponent's dragon, but you're sacrificing your own 170 point hero to do it. And dying to Life-Force Powered Blue Sword is worse than dying to enemy attacks, because your opponent doesn't even have to waste a turn dealing with Ithariel, he can immediately use the hero Ithariel engaged to go attack someone else.
The better case is when you can sacrifice an Ithariel who was already almost dead to deal massive damage to an enemy hero who isn't, but that's where the disengaging becomes tricky. If Ithariel only has one or two life left, taking a couple of disengagements might kill him and prevent him from getting a final attack off at all.
Your opponent definitely has to think about how to deny Ithariel good opportunities to use his sword, and if their army is all really high price figures, they might have a bad time. But most armies have some cheap commons who can block Ithariel from getting to your higher priced figures, and they also aren't going to have that hard a time putting their key figures far enough apart that Ithariel isn't going to be able to hit 3 or 4 of them at once.
If he does prove to be a bit too good, though, I like your suggestion of dropping his life or defense instead of raising his cost. That would fit with his Reckless personality, and his willingness to throw everything he's got into a suicidal attack.