The Book of Baron Mordo

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by quozl

I think these kinds of spells would really benefit from about 10 heavy hitter tests (for those unfamiliar with the term - that is 1 hero vs. 1 hero).

I did 10, 1 on 1 tests when testing the first 6 spells, those results were also dismissed when they didn't match up with theory.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

No, your theory strongly suggests that the price is higher than the lead wants to see, the results back up the lead's position but is being dismissed since it doesn't back up the theory.

Nope, the numbers from the actual games support my position pretty clearly, just as they did in the WoD discussion.

Originally Posted by Yodaking

So according to you, every time Azreal attacks Strange he is earning 60+ points of value.

Absolutely, yes. That's actually an understatement.

On level ground, Azrael has a 59% chance of doing a wound to Strange. If he does, he gets another 50% shot to do a wound. Then he gets to do the whole thing again. That's an average of 1.77 wounds, which is almost 90 points of damage, on average.

Drop Azrael's attack to 2, and his average drops to .54 wounds, for an average of around 27 points. So Mesmerize is delivering over 60 points of value on average when used against Azrael to defend Strange. Exactly in line with the number I gave.

Again, this is without considering board position or potential lost OMs, both of which would suggest a higher value. (It's also without considering Mordo's synergies, but presumably those are shared into Mordo's cost.)

Originally Posted by Yodaking

Seems really underpriced at 170 points then if he can earn back 180 points by using 3OM.

Not at all! That's how Heroscape works. If you can get your big hitter in position and knock some heads against an expensive figure for an entire round, you're doing really well. That's how you win.

In reality, it's quite hard to pull that off - usually your opponent is doing things to try to kill Azrael, or throw him next to Blob, or whatever.

Originally Posted by Yodaking

5 def. is pretty stout vs. just 3 att. die. The math of 1.5 skulls vs. 1.66 shields says it's worth 0 points.

That's not how probability works.

[Tornado]

My suggestion at this point L_O is to finalize Mordo only right now.

Then go back and address the concerns on the spells.

I am going to have to side with the CRB here.
This is the exact reason they were assembled.

These types of spells are going to require far more testing than we are used to if we want to keep things safe. I know it stinks but we have to be careful here.

We have something really special going on with spells and we need to proceed with caution.

[japes]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

You're looking at it from a purely mathematical approach and not from a game impact approach. At 45 points I would never consider it worth drafting, and it would push Mordo's combined price up far higher than it should ever be. Plus, you haven't taken into account the final five games, at least two of which saw it have 0 impact. Plus, please bear in mind that it is literally useless vs. Special Attacks and special powers. Plus, a few of those tests were listed in ways where you can't reliably state it's impact. When it subtracted 3 from Deadpool's attack, he could easily have done nothing anyway, so a sure statement of it being worth 75+ points is illogical.
I really don't want to abort this design, but I'm starting to think doing so might be inevitable if the alternative is a Mordo who's disappointing, overpriced and never drafted.

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

Okay, I'm increasingly thinking I'm going to need to propose we abort Mordo - this just isn't working, and it's becoming increasingly clear he'll never be passed at a reasonable value that fits with what every playtester felt was fair.

See...this kind of comment is the reason I have kept a safe distance from the spells in general and have reservations...If your thoughts are that Mordo isn't worth drafting without the spells then the problem isn't the spells it's Mordo. The spell system (like Knockback, throwing, and other C3G OPTIONAL rulesets) are suppose to be OPTIONAL...that means if I don't want to play with them I don't have to and the game works. If we are designing figures that only work with Spells then that is a FAIL on our part. Having spells that add flavor to a design is great but I don't think we need 37 spells for the system to work.

Personally I don't see why Mordo should be aborted...I understand he was to take some of the heat off of the spell cost since it works better for him but him getting pushed 10 points at his level is an easy burden. It's no different from when I added 10 points to a sub 200 pint figure simply because I know she will be better with her full thematic/synergistic team around. I don't see the difference here with Mordo getting fully tested and finished with a 10 point bump. And THEN go into testing A spell and settle on a price. I think the issue here as that we are working a single equation with multiple unknowns...that may just be the engineer in me but that sounds like a poor choice.

[Lazy Orang]

Okay, here is what I'm thinking.

We are, undoubtably, in a logjam, and if we continue like this, then we're never going to move forward. Mesmerise has been thoroughly tested by myself, Arkham, Ronin, Yodaking and All Your Pie, and of those, none of them felt that it was overpowered - in fact, one felt that it was too weak for the cost, though I recognise that was likely due to not knowing how to play it, as he has said. Based on this, I am not happy with making a 100% or higher increase in the spell's cost - it will result in a design I am not happy with, and which would be, I believe, clearly overcosted - I am happy with the spell at 35 points, but any higher would not, in my opinion, be reasonable.
At the same time, no one seems to have any issue with Mordo himself, nor, indeed, with Hypnotise - those are designs everyone seems to be happy with. I would prefer not to ditch Mesmerise, but I would like even less to leave Mordo and Hypnotise trapped in a deadlock. Now, we already have two Yea votes for the set as a whole - two more, I believe, would be enough to pass it. As such, I am going to call in @Yodaking , @TrollBrute and @japes to vote Yea, Nay or whatever, to give their opinions, and go from there. If it passes - no problem. If it doesn't, or we're still trapped in deadlock by the end of Friday, then I'm likely going to ditch Mesmerise until after the Spell Release (probably a while after) and move forward with Mordo and Hypnotise. It's not ideal, and it won't quite be the Mordo I wanted, but I don't want to keep things held up any longer.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Originally Posted by Tornado

I am going to have to side with the CRB here.
This is the exact reason they were assembled.

Well, in fairness this is really more dok's thing. I don't have any particular feelings on the spell personally (or any of this spell stuff really). 30 points doesn't seem terribly unreasonable to me, but I haven't been following all that close.

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by dok

Absolutely, yes. That's actually an understatement.

On level ground, Azrael has a 59% chance of doing a wound to Strange. If he does, he gets another 50% shot to do a wound. Then he gets to do the whole thing again. That's an average of 1.77 wounds, which is almost 90 points of damage, on average.

That's not how probability works.

So the math only works when you want it too. Got it.

At 30 or more points, I wound never draft the spell in a blind 'tournament' format where I don't know who my opponents will be. It becomes a counter draft only spell where you first need to know for sure your opponent has one or more of the 41 figures identified as having multiple normal attacks, and then you have to hope that figure ends up attacking your MD figure during that game, and you still don't whiff while rolling defense vs. their reduced attacks in order to earn back your points investment.

With 670+ cards that will be completed by the time the spell gets release, those 41 cards represent 6% of the field. You could add in the other 6 cards I identified as having a special power that would lead to multiple W to a MD figure with one successful attack, and add in the 17 figures with MD (this includes the 5 MD figures that will be released with the spells) that can deal multiple Ws to a MD figure for a total of 64 potential good use targets. Lets say 67 just in case I missed a few cards, that would represents just 10% of the field. I suppose you could argue that those 67 cards are more likely to be brought to a tournament than 1/2 of the other cards we have made, but even then that is only a 20% chance your opponent will have a figure in their army you might be able to earn your 30+ points back on.

In the end I'd rather just cut that 135 (or fewer if the spell cost more than 30 points) point figure I was thinking about using and add Blob into my army. He is going to do a much better job protecting my MD figure from those 41 multiple-normal attack cards that might show up. He can lock down and fully absorb multiple OM's worth of attacks, not just partially block one OM worth of attacks like the spell does.

30 points of Fire Ant Swarms are actually a better investment. They don't require any OM's at all to move up and engage an opponent. If they move up and engage Tigra, when she has multiple wounds on her card, and she has to spend an OM worth of attacks killing them instead of attacking my MD figure, they have done a better job than the spell ever could since the spell still gives Tigra a chance to deal wounds to the MD figure while there is no chance for Tigra to deal wounds to the MD figure when attacking the Fire Ants. 40 points of Fire Ants actually absorbs 2 OM's worth of attacks from Tigra who maxes out at 3 attacks.

[japes]

What are we voting for here. Is it Mordo at 270 and Hypnotize at 30?

Those are the two things that seem to have no clouds around them and I'd have little issue voting YEA there. If you are asking me to vote for all three then it would be a NAY.

Considering this is Mordo's thread I'd ask you to limit the vote to just Mordo so that I could vote YEA...if you leave it open as multiple votes and I can only vote yea for all or nay for all, then I can't vote YEA at this time.

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by japes

What are we voting for here. Is it Mordo at 270 and Hypnotize at 30?

Those are the two things that seem to have no clouds around them and I'd have little issue voting YEA there. If you are asking me to vote for all three then it would be a NAY.

Considering this is Mordo's thread I'd ask you to limit the vote to just Mordo so that I could vote YEA...if you leave it open as multiple votes and I can only vote yea for all or nay for all, then I can't vote YEA at this time.

It would be the group as a whole. If Mesmerise fails I'll probably push Mordo through at 265 and Hypnotise through at 25. I tried splitting up the vote between the separate threads, but it made discussion impossible to keep track of.

Originally Posted by Yodaking

So the math only works when you want it too. Got it.

At 30 or more points, I wound never draft the spell in a blind 'tournament' format where I don't know who my opponents will be. It becomes a counter draft only spell where you first need to know for sure your opponent has one or more of the 41 figures identified as having multiple normal attacks, and then you have to hope that figure ends up attacking your MD figure during that game, and you still don't whiff while rolling defense vs. their reduced attacks in order to earn back your points investment.

With 670+ cards that will be completed by the time the spell gets release, those 41 cards represent 6% of the field. You could add in the other 6 cards I identified as having a special power that would lead to multiple W to a MD figure with one successful attack, and add in the 17 figures with MD (this includes the 5 MD figures that will be released with the spells) that can deal multiple Ws to a MD figure for a total of 64 potential good use targets. Lets say 67 just in case I missed a few cards, that would represents just 10% of the field. I suppose you could argue that those 67 cards are more likely to be brought to a tournament than 1/2 of the other cards we have made, but even then that is only a 20% chance your opponent will have a figure in their army you might be able to earn your 30+ points back on.

In the end I'd rather just cut that 135 (or fewer if the spell cost more than 30 points) point figure I was thinking about using and add Blob into my army. He is going to do a much better job protecting my MD figure from those 41 multiple-normal attack cards that might show up. He can lock down and fully absorb multiple OM's worth of attacks, not just partially block one OM worth of attacks like the spell does.

30 points of Fire Ant Swarms are actually a better investment. They don't require any OM's at all to move up and engage an opponent. If they move up and engage Tigra, when she has multiple wounds on her card, and she has to spend an OM worth of attacks killing them instead of attacking my MD figure, they have done a better job than the spell ever could since the spell still gives Tigra a chance to deal wounds to the MD figure while there is no chance for Tigra to deal wounds to the MD figure when attacking the Fire Ants. 40 points of Fire Ants actually absorbs 2 OM's worth of attacks from Tigra who maxes out at 3 attacks.

As I've said before, I agree, which is part of the reason I'm not going to be passing Mesmerise at any higher than 35. I would ask though, Yodaking, that you vote Yea if you really want to keep the full Mordo set moving at a decent price.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

So the math only works when you want it too. Got it.

No, I mean that's literally not how probability works. You can't work out averages, subtract one from the other, and figure out value. You need to figure out the distribution of skulls and shield rolls, and then by finding the likelihood of each intersection of skull and shield numbers you can figure out expected damage.

An attack of 3v5 has a 32.1% chance of inflicting at least one wound (exactly one, when attacking a MD figure). Doc Oc attacking Strange doesn't average zero wounds, he averages 1.28 wounds. He doesn't average 0 points of damage, he averages 64. Making the value of Mesmerizing him - surprise! - about 64. There's that 60+ popping up again.

[Yodaking]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

Alright then, I'm going to restart the vote, and I'm going to have the whole vote go on in this thread for simplicity's sake - I Propose Moving to Final Editing, with Baron Mordo at 260, with Mesmerise at 30, and with Hypnotise at 30.

@Tornado - Yea
@johnny139 - Abstain
@Viegon - Yea
@Yodaking -
@japes -
@TrollBrute -

Yea to Baron Mordo @260
Yea to Hypnotise @30, with a note that I will never, ever use this spell without Mordo. Take away the hypnotize personality angle leading to Mordo taking temp. control and trading one attack to get rid of one OM has limited value to anyone else. If that is what the LD wants here, then I won't stand in her way.
Nay to Mesmerize @30, better options I could spent those 30 points on.

[Spidey'tilIDie]

@Lazy Orang I really think you should consider breaking the designs apart instead of pushing them through en masse. I don't understand your position on this. Also, I think @japes comment needs to be really listened to, especially because it follows with my concerns. Needless to say, I agree with him. Spells, like Knockback, should be optional, not necessary. If you aren't happy with Mordo passing at his current cost, sans Spells, then he shouldn't be passed. People should be able to play Mordo without any Spells and feel he is well costed. If one of these Spells feels necessary to him, then maybe it should be on his card, instead of as a Spell. Spells, like glyphs, should be light touches, and not feel OP.
On another note, I believe you would be best served to drop Superstrength from his card. People have raised issue with this and instead of answers, their questions were overlooked.