Nazgul are Abroad and Half an Eye Open

Where the Virtual Boyz plan their latest capers
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marcos
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i like the discard stuff
Frodo
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I like Jambo's explanation, thematic and otherwise, of the discard mechanic... Okay, well, why not test it?

I'm still worried it won't pan out exactly as you say because I don't agree with the idea that a deck with 9 Nazgul and 9 athomes is a weak hazard deck. I have seen *many* Worlds-caliber decks (played by National and World Champions) that use this extreme version of a dump-and-run strategy and it can be frighteningly effective.

So if there's no more comments, shall we post the final versions here, then on the other forum? So a discard of 2 nazguls/athomes, 2 free hazards per m/h, and remove Parsimony from the list that requires 2 discards.

Frodo
Jambo
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I think Parsimony under the card is nice, but I really think it should cost two discards. Parsimony underneath HaEO will be played for free and without any discard cost it's like having a Dragon manifestation in your hand at all times, other than perhaps the first turn of the game! It would means no company could move to Ruins and Lairs with two ww, move through 3 www, or move in Dragon land without facing an immediate Ahunt. Moreover, everbody would be including 3 copies to the detriment of the other cool Dragon cards, and it also has very strong resource implications with the Roused Dragons. Given all this I think the two at Home discard is about right for Parsimony. It won't rule it out, but at least it will have some cost associated with it.

Joe, can you give me some examples of why packing the 9 at Homes, would be preferable to packing just a few? I can think of many other preferable hazards to include. LDR (preferable in hand), Power Built, River, Unexpected Outpost, Withered Lands, Doors of Night, maybe some Shadow-hold creatures for Frenzy of Madness, etc.

Anyway, this is where we'd be:
New TNaA wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If there is a Nazgûl in play, you may play non-creature hazards placed with this card that have the word “Nazgûl” in their game text as if they were in your hand. You must discard two Nazgul events from play in order to play Long Dark Reach, Fury of the Iron Crown, Morgul Horse or Scimitars of Steel in this manner. Once per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting Nazgûl creatures do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when your play deck is exhausted.
New HaEO wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If an "at Home" event is in play, you may play non-unique hazard events placed with this card that mention a named Dragon or the word “Dragon” in their game text or title as if they were in your hand. You must discard two "at Home" events from play in order to play Parsimony of Seclusion, Prowess of Age, Long Dark Reach or From the Pits of Angband in this manner. Twice per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting Dragon manifestations do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when your play deck is exhausted.
I think these are quite cool, and they're certainly a massively improvement on the previous versions. If there's agreement, I'll post them in the corrections thread. I intend to make a copy of that thread and put it in the Showcase forum for others to use.
Frodo
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>It would means no company could move to Ruins and Lairs with two ww, move through 3 www, or move in Dragon land without facing an immediate Ahunt.

You mean if they were using Lecauruth, since he’s the only one that can be keyed to triple wilderness? Ok. So that would mean the first HaEO would have to have attached Desolation, Fever, Parsimony, and something else. I guess that’s a reasonable estimate. Maybe you’re right about Parsimony; it’s just that I don’t think having a dragon manifestation in your hands at all times is necessarily a bad thing! It’s not THAT difficult to avoid ruins and lairs with two wildernesses (heck, all my gccg opponents in the last tourney did that), if you’re going to dragon country you’re prepared for dragons, and not many decks do greater than 2 wilderness movements with some serious prowess or concealers. In other words, Parsimony in this case will do *nothing more* than what a single dragon creature (of any name) held onto in hand will do. We have to think of the benefits from the point of view of the hazard player: the ability to more precisely grab the Dragon with the right hunting range that can tag his opponent; in other words, the look through all the dragons in his sideboard that can possible meet the area of the map the opponent is wandering.

Roused Dragons… there is a slight limitation in that the player would still have to use multiple at-homes in deck to play Parsimony card from underneath it. I don’t know whether this is enough of a check, or even whether free Parsimonys is a too-strong benefit for the dragon faction gatherer.

>Joe, can you give me some examples of why packing the 9 at Homes, would be preferable to packing just a few?

Oh sure; I thought everyone knew about this deck. First, true speed decks don’t care about stopping the opponent per se; they have such an incredible resource strategy (One Ring, some Fallen Wizard) that all they want to do is burn through cards at the absolute fastest speed humanly possible. Regarding the athome component of this strategy, the reason to pack all 9 (save Lec at Home) plus the Ahunts into a true speed “dump em all” deck is all because of Agburanar at Home, who makes 1 per m/h phase count for free. So with an average draw of Agburanar at 3rd or 2nd turn (or a lucky draw earlier), and the use of Revealed to peek ahead into deck, and the use of almost nothing else save instantly playable perms and creature-perms, even if your opponent has only 3 companies with HLs of 2 you can be laying down *three* hazards on each m/h (or at least plus one hazard on each if he has higher than 2 HL), for an extra draw of three cards every single hazard turn. (Not to mention the draw you get from always having the playable hazards on each company.) Of course this only works if you have a lot of athomes (or Ahunts) into the deck that can be targeted by Agburanar’s special ability, which is why you always want to choose unique Dragon events over Spawns, or even Nazguls for that matter.

Can anyone else weigh on just the Parsimony issue? I’d like to be convinced on which method to playtest: discard two dragons for a Parsimony, or let Parsimony play for free.

Oh, I just though of a middle-ground route that might make people happy: is there any reason we’re allowing HaEO to target “per movement/hazard phase” over “per turn” other than to match it to previously existing abilities like on Agburanar at Home? ‘Cause if we rewrote it to say “Twice per turn, you may play a hazard from this card…”, this would do two things: 1) make people feel better that HaEO is not allowing an incredible number of free dragon boosters per turn 2) make the free play (non-discard) option of Parsimony much more limited, because now you are definitely sucking away from your freebie dragon hazards each turn, as opposed to last time when you could just wait for a m/h when nothing much was happening and then play Parsimony.

Frodo
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Thorsten the Traveller
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Well I suppose if you feel you need to play the dump and run, you don't really care about the amount of freebies you get from HaEO, if you even play it in the deck at all it's just added bonus. Playing Parsimony from under HaEO would get you Agburanar fast though. The main worry I have with Parsimony is that people use it just to up the hl.
When I proposed Parsimony be on it, it was mainly to compensate for having only one freebie. Getting the dragon you need is of course very good, but if you then need a keyability card to let it attack, it takes up more hl or at least takes two HaEO (unless used only on Agburanar). But I must admit I somehow developed a blind spot for the ahunts, didn't cross my mind someone would use it to get an ahunt which of course could attack immediately, strangely enough...
I think Parsimony is too strong if it comes without drawback, I agree with Jambo on second thought.

There is a bit of ambiguity in having to discard two athomes which I don't like at all, and more so when it comes to Parsimony. Because other than the nazgul, the athomes can backfire on you. But now, you can discard Agburanar athome to get it back again for the extra hl. Also, when used to get a dragon faction it is actually very helpful, because if I want to play the faction, I don't want to have the athome in play of course, so allowing me to discard it where normally I would rely on my opponent to do that for me (except Daelomin), that's strangly beneficial. In fact it would be more normal to oblige people to play an athome before they may play Parsimony. That way it takes up hl as well. Same goes for combining the hazard strat with a dragon country resource portion. You can now conveniently leave the athome on table, preventing opponent to play it, and then the turn before you plan to go there, just discard it. It's a bit odd. Turns out that Itangast/Scorba helps your opponent more than you because he Lure of Nature's you? just discard them!

How about an athome must be in play for each HaEO, and allowing a number of freebies per turn according to number of athomes in play? That way having to discard an athome would really matter to the strategy. Maybe we can then reduce the number of athomes required to discard to one. It may result in absurd amount of freebies, but at least you don't get any discussion like: "did that freebie come from that HaEO, I thought it came from this one, and you already used up your two freebies from this one..." this game more and more trains your memory :wink:
Stone-age did not end because man ran out of rocks.
Jambo
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Yeah Thorsten, I kind of see where you're coming from with the discarding of the at Homes. There's possibly too much of an advantage to be had in some situations, e.g. opponent has Wormsbane and heads to at Home site to kill the at Home - you discard at Home during character's m/h phase. :cry:

Another angle might be to require a certain number of at Homes to be in play?

E.g.:
"There must be three "at Home" events in play in order to play Parsimony of Seclusion, Prowess of Age, Long Dark Reach or From the Pits of Angband in this manner."

It's a different mechanism from TNaA but at least it still requires some work to reach the point where the more powerful cards are playable from underneath HaEO.

Does anyone else have an alternative, maybe better, method to control these cards? The other option of course is just to have these remain as exceptions... but I kind of like the idea of having an interesting dynamic.
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Bandobras Took
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I like the idea of Half an Eye getting more useful the more At Homes are in play. Sign me up for that. :)
Frodo
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Nice catch, Thorsten! (Sigh... there's always catches!)

I like Jambo's approach better (requiring a minimum number of at-homes) OR Thorsten's first approach (requiring the PLAY of an at-home to play the stronger dragon hazards). We could word Thorsten's approach as follows, "As an additional cost to play X, X, and X, you must play one Dragon at-home immediately beforehand." I admit that this is still a little weird, though. Maybe it could still work? It would also slow down the speed dump-decks that still wish to benefit from these HaEO cards, which is something I really like about this approach.

Jambo's approach works for me on everything BUT the Parsimony issue. I do understand the HL worry, however. So, wouldn't it help the issue tremendously if Parsimony could only be played once per turn? That way the player could only be grabbing a dragon OR once per turn increasing the hazard limit. If we STILL think this is too strong, we could finally say, "Parsimony make target Agburanar only once per game." That would really settle it!

What do we think? These are both nifty alternatives.

Frodo
Jambo
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Anyone else with a preference?

Having to play an at Home to be able to access the better cards?
Or
Having to have a certain number of at Homes on the table (could be your opponent's at Homes)?

Free haz per turn?
Or
Free haz per m/h phase?

Parsimony included in list of 'tougher' cards?
Or
Not?

Should be able to tie it up after this.
marcos
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Jambo wrote:Anyone else with a preference?

Having to play an at Home to be able to access the better cards?
Or
Having to have a certain number of at Homes on the table (could be your opponent's at Homes)?
Having to have a certain number of at Homes on the table
Jambo wrote:Free haz per turn?
Or
Free haz per m/h phase?
Free haz per turn
Jambo wrote:Parsimony included in list of 'tougher' cards?
Or
Not?
Parsimony included
Jambo
Posts: 888
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 3:01 pm

New TNaA wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If there is a Nazgûl in play, you may play non-creature hazards placed with this card that have the word “Nazgûl” in their game text as if they were in your hand. You must discard two Nazgul events from play in order to play Long Dark Reach, Fury of the Iron Crown, Morgul Horse or Scimitars of Steel in this manner. Once per movement/hazard phase, hazards targeting Nazgûl creatures do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when your play deck is exhausted.
New HaEO wrote:When this card is played, take up to four hazards from your discard pile or sideboard and place them face down with this card. If an "at Home" event is in play, you may play non-unique hazard events placed with this card that mention a named Dragon or the word “Dragon” in their game text or title as if they were in your hand. There must be three "at Home" events in play in order to play Parsimony of Seclusion, Prowess of Age, Long Dark Reach or From the Pits of Angband in this manner. Twice per turn, hazards targeting Dragon manifestations do not count against the hazard limit. Discard when your play deck is exhausted.
Are we there yet? ;)
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Thorsten the Traveller
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seems about right, playtest will prove if 3 is enough, what with the removal of the discard clause, it doesn't seem too hard to achieve 3 on the table. Makes you think twice about discarding Daelomin though.

Maybe make it your own 3 athomes must be in play, so that opponent can counter by dropping his athomes? Also nice if two opponents play the same strat.
Stone-age did not end because man ran out of rocks.
Frodo
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Location: NYC, NY

I think we're good to go as is. Let's leave it as any at homes for now.

Frodo
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