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Custom Units & Army Cards Fan-created HS army cards for units, glyphs, and equipment |
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#4297
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
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#4298
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
I've been summoned via the magical tag, so I'll add a few thoughts on Ebol. It should be noted I have little to no experience with SoV designing (and how they view changes in the meta), so my thoughts are just based on competitive army building. I'm also far from an expert on the C3V meta, with most of my experience being classic scape only. I played somewhere between 5 - 8 games against HS2010 w/ Ebol.
1) I think the biggest effect Ebol has on the meta is boosting the power level of 2 types of armies: A) A/A+ junk with rats. I think this is Ebol's best build, and I think he greatly increases the potential of Q9/Raelin/Hydra/Rats. My biggest concern is how much stronger Ebol makes this build; however, I haven't played this matchup and can't be sure. But Ebol + ratsx3 is extremely good. Regardless of Ebol's place in (or not in) SoV, I think it's important for Ebol to be priced based on this potential to make sure the A+ junk with rats can't field Ebol comfortably under 550 points. B) Mixes of unique squads and heroes. I think this is the best "addition" Ebol can make to the meta in theory, as it strengthens their standing in the meta to be closer to massed A/A- commons. 2) I think Ebol is much stronger the closer you get to 600 points. I don't think Ebol is a good Raelin replacement, but rather excels as an addition, much like Ranjit. 3) I think Ebol changes the meta more (exactly how much more, I'm not sure) than Ranjit because Ebol helps A+ units more than Ranjit (you want to take more than 1 OM per round on Q9) does whereas Ranjit helps lower cost unique figures like Guilty more. 4) There are good Ebol counter armies against almost anything but A+ junk (basically Hydra & rats counter the Ebol counters really well): Cyprien, Syvarris, Zetacron, & Phantom Knights come to mind. 5) I don't think Ebol + Children x a lot is that good; B+ at best, more likely B. The lack of range (if you include a ranged figure, you basically can only use OM3 on him which is a significant hindrance) is devastating. Many competitive maps have choke points that can be used to nullify the 6 activations you would get on OM1. Bonding mele is significantly stronger because of the 2 turns allowing more intricate maneuvering & 15 activations per turn via bonding is equal to 15 activations via children. When you hit an army with any of the counters from (4) in it, you just lose. Their 3 defense, instead of 4, hurts a lot during rounds 1 - 2 while you slow roll them. 6) I am a fan of adding extra strategy to who you attack based on OM placement, and I liked how there are situations with Ebol where you're better off not attacking anything on your turn 3 to kill him early in a round instead. It's a neat situation to add into the meta, in my view. 7) I don't think the OM change at the meta level is that different from Ranjit. With both armies, I can look at my opponent's board position and predict, with 80% - 90% accuracy or better, which figures will end up taking a turn when. Both nullify the 'X' and make reading your opponent's OMs 'face up'. To me, that's the main difference in the meta; not which card the OMs are physically placed on. 8 ) Sensory overload is an annoyance for the player fielding Ebol, but unlikely to lose them the game (unless one of the counters from (4) has already done 2-3 wounds on Ebol early). Just a summary of my thoughts on the figure, based on the playtesting I've done with HS2010. |
#4299
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
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Arena of the Valkyire - Help create Heroscape's next Master Set! Trade List C3V Brainstorm never not funny Pepperony - 14/09/13 |
#4300
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
Appreciate the comments Chris. Whether it changes anyone's mind or not about Ebol, I don't know, but they are useful for my regardless.
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The problem with Ebol + Rats + Junk w/ or w/o Raelin is that the goal of the army is the same as it is without Ebol, and your Order Marker activations pretty well mirror that. It is rarely worth it to spend a whole activation on Rats mid-game, Ebol or not. Vydar was mostly attacking up front with Knights with the occasional Nilfy OM to maybe thin out the Rat screen without the Scatters replacing the ones the Knights did kill. I really don't think I spent an OM on the Rats or Raelin once I got into my setup. It was all on Q9 until the Knights ran into my screen and then I used the Hydra clear the Knights. Wash, rinse, repeat. (Except my dice were struggling a little bit so it wasn't quite that easy. ) While it's nothing to scuff at, Ebol + Raelin + Rats can be deceptively powerful in the sense that, as Vydar mentioned in his post, it is only once you start having 3+ cards to manage that you start to consider adding Ebol. I really would not count Raelin or Rats as one of those 3 cards as nothing about the Raelin-Rat combo really changes with Ebol. Raelin still loves to use the first OM of the game to get into position and stay there until she dies and the Rats still love using 2-3 OMs before leaving it up to Scatter to do the rest. Now of course who you activate behind the Rat screen and inside of Raelin's aura can be affected by Ebol, but with menacers like Q9 and the Hydra, you could easily do without Ebol as well. I would think swiss-army knife, RTW-esque, builds would benefit much more highly from Ebol than the sit-and-shoot army that this post has been about. |
#4301
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Quick Chime In
Actually midgame OMs on rats or Raelin is often a really good play as
@dok
will attest to. When you do those can very much be key to whether or not you win the game. Being able to flex those away is... really powerful.
~Dysole, somewhere in the middle on the "Ebol is bad for future design" argument My Twitch Channel where I play Scape and other things My YouTube Channel where the games get uploaded later Dysole's Draft Rankings Map Thread (Not responsible for psychic damage) Customs Battle Reports This sentence is seven words long. This sentence is not seven words long. |
#4302
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
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I do want to expand on one thing though from the A+ pods: Hydra. The biggest benefit of Hydra in the A+ armies is to have a huge heavy hitter ready and waiting for the right moment (threat against Cyprien, Grimnak, etc. closing in on your pod). But the hard part is guessing the right moment to switch from your ranged game to your mele game without burning an OM when Cyprien doesn't rush in because he's scared of hydra. And Hydra hurts the most from OMs after taking a few wounds (unlike Q9 or Braxas). I think Ebol's affect on improving Hydra's ability to: (1) react at the perfect time, & (2) avoid taking turns after losing 2 heads, is probably the single biggest effect on the A+ armies Ebol would be in. There are times to move rats midgame with Ebol that you would otherwise lose out on, which is definitely nice, but having a 100% threat of 4x4 if your opponent gets close enough to attack Q9 in mele via swapping to Hydra for a turn is huge. For clarity, I'm considering an army such as: Raelin, Ebol, Q9, Hydra, Rats x3 (580 pts). This is again where I think Ebol affects the meta at 550+ pts more, because at less points you probably can't get Ebol, Hydra, & Q9 into the same army, at which point the OM switching is far less valuable. |
#4303
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
Elbad, the Necro-Assistant
This design is a mix of things I like and things I don't, but the ones I don't I fairly minor. Overall it's an interesting design that's nicely restrained in stats. The bio is overly complicated. Frankly, it feels it's being forced into the Esenwein story when it doesn't even need to be connected to the Esenweins. That's not a big deal though, and not really a problem, except I worry that it's holding back the design. For example, Elbad doesn't have to be a thrall creation at all. Mindless Pack Enhancement is a cool idea for a power. My only worry that it will make him a must-pick in a Thrall army. That may not be a bad thing, though. I don't mind "Mindless Pack Enhancement" though it's not perfect; I'm against anything "Supremacy" unless it does +1 to the d20, like every other Supremacy power. Necromatic Nexus is a cool idea, though I suspect of little value in practice. It would take a lot of playtesting to be sure, but Elbad isn't tough enough to put him near the front lines, and not worth any order markers otherwise. No, I don't really think that Nexus is good enough to warrant order markers for positioning for any of the existing summoning Undead. He's the Khosumet of the Thralls that way, just someone to leave in the back for the enhancement. I don't actually mind that for this unit, but if Nexus is a dead power that's a problem. That could be solved by making him a Thrall as was suggested, as he could get some turns in with other Thralls and the player wouldn't be so afraid to lose him, though the "smart undead" concept doesn't fit the "Mindless Pack" theme so well, nor does the power level you have him at as you noted. (It does lead to some potentially interesting gameplay decisions, though. Do I kill Elbad if he'll just come back, or try to focus my attention elsewhere?) I don't like the class Champion. It's a very broad term so I can't deny it outright, but it doesn't feel right for the design. I don't like the term "Necro-assistant." It's descriptive for what you want as a concept, but it sounds kinda lame to me, to be blunt. I'd like it better as a class than a name, oddly enough. |
#4304
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
This is what we played with Marcu added for 600pts against KoW x3, Gilbert, Nilfy, and Krav. You are dead on about the Hydra and that’s how I played it. I set a line of Rats just in front of the Hydra and Q9 with Raelin behind them and as soon as Vydar brought in his Knights I mowed them down with a Hydra activation. That was a boon to that army for sure. I think Himmelskralle is a similar figure who benefits in much of the same way where guessing when to put the OM on him is so difficult that Ebol makes the him much better.
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#4305
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
@Chris Perkins
If Ebol’s biggest effect in the A+ Pod army, and consequently on the meta, is the [one] OM that he can move to activate the Hydra whenever the army needs, at 600pts, once you have Q9, Hydra, Raelin, and Rats x3, would you say that Rygarn already does that for 10pts more with way less risk and more reliability? Further more, would you rather fill out the final 100pts with Ebol and Marcu or Rygarn and Isamu? |
#4306
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
To preface, I'm not an expert on Rygarn (have seen used sparingly), so keep that in mind (basically I'm not sure how valuable 'Temporal Jump' really is in practice).
I would take Ebol + Marcu over Rygarn + Isamu for 2 reasons: 1) Marcu > Isamu 2) The chance of "switching" 2 OMs in the 1-2 rounds where it matters is an upside worth more than Rygarn's 1 extra defense dice. Raelin + Rats is enough survivability to keep either Ebol or Rygarn alive against most armies you'd face. Admittedly Rygarn has less risk, but I think Raelin + Rats mitigate that risk a lot. I do think this is close though, as there aren't many times you'd need to move that 2nd OM (they mostly arise when whoever wins init makes a big swing and you'd want to switch multiple OMs as a result). But Marcu > Isamu is a meaningful factor for me when Rygarn is 10 points more. I hadn't really thought of the Rygarn comparison as directly before in the 600 pt army. Perhaps Ebol would need to cost more than Rygarn (or at least the same) to compensate; I'm not entirely sure though and would have to do those play tests to have a more firm opinion. |
#4307
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Re: The Pre-SoV Workshop
I’ll touch on this as far as Marcu and Ebol’s relationship goes. This goes back to my chart of Lowest Point Values per Overload Opportunities Added.
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It’s an interesting dynamic, IMO. Obviously someone has to soak Wannok, and let’s say instead of Marcu in the Raelin/Rats/Q9/Hydra/Ebol army we added Isamu and Bol (Bol also has an interesting dynamic with Ebol in that most of the time you want to kill off Bol first so that he can’t be Opportunistic upon an Ebol assassination. Continuing...). Who’s going to be the Wannok-soaker for that army? A spare Rat? Raelin? Ebol himself? Obviously no matter who it is, unless it is Ebol himself, Ebol has a chance of taking a wound regardless. I’m simply stating that Marcu adds more OOs than anyone else in the game at the lowest point value. Note that if the ‘X’ OM is still on Ebol’s card at the end of the round when Wannok hits and he rolls for Overload that he can remove the ‘X’ to avoid that wound. Ebol himself makes an interesting Wannok-soaker. 2 wounds on Ebol is where things start to get interesting, because 3 wounds is where he forces you to make decisions on whether you want to reveal a numbered OM (mostly OM3) or kill him off. Because of that information, placing a 3rd wound on Ebol becomes very precarious because of the above and it makes it even easier for him to be assassinated. At the same time, end of rounds where your opponent is on Wannok but left Ebol alive, having that 3rd wound on him gives you the ability to kill him off with the Wannok wound and avoid the potential of losing all of your OMs at the start of the new round. Similarly, if you won initiative, having that 3rd wound on him allows you to kill him off if your opponent triggers Overload with their OM 3. It is because of this, that situations like what Sir Heroscape described, aren’t really the case. It’s in situations like that where instead of having Marital La Hire, Prince al’Kahora, or even Rygarn to fight back, you are stuck with 3 OMs on Ebol at the time where he’s most likely to be assassinated. Talk about deceptively powerful. Now there is something Scy brought up that is interesting and that is Bigga’s review for the Catalan Mercenaries. I can see where Ebol could be viewed as similar, seeing as how losing 3 OMs late game is practically GGs, but you have much more control over that situation and being able to kill off Ebol yourself than a d20 roll where half your figures disappear. Regardless, I think only diving deeper into Ebol by actually playing the games is the only way to know for sure whether or not that argument is legitimate. |
#4308
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Re: Quick Chime In
Somehow I missed this last night.
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I’ve actually been curious to see if Dok would add his thoughts to this as I know he loves Rats. I also know, from our OnlineCon VC Allowed game, that he likes Varks, which is one faction I think highly benefits from Ebol being able to see which Varks are most beneficial to put an OM on at any given time. Thanks for your thoughts Dysole. |
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