Excluding the example of a unit Dwarf Slayers (which Gurni's Elite doesn't represent), there is no reason either mechanically or flavourfully for Gurni's Elite to be a Dwarf card. I will go into more detail later, but I just initially want to see people's opinions on this. Should Gurni's Elite have been released as a Dwarf card when its use as an example of Warriors is clearly unflavourful and also mechanically unlike previously released Dwarfs?

This isn't QQ, and I like the card as a card in a vacuum, its just after years of reading MaRo's MTG design articles you pick up on stuff like this. How much thought do you went into making Gurni's Elite a Dwarf card as opposed to Orc?

Gurni's Elite allows for some offensive Dwarf power. Combined with Stand Your Ground...makes for a good match up. I can see how you can think it would be better off as an Orc card, however, I like that the card designs are overlapping themes. It will allow for much more diverse deck builds in the future.

FiendishDevil said:

As I said, I like the card and like the offensive power it presents Dwarves with (not too great against Chaos, but I digress), I was just wondering why there was any reason for Orc and Dwarf card design to overlap in a battlefield only high-power low-HP unit, which is designed to represent a mainstay Dwarven unit such as a block of Warriors, especially Elite ones at that when it also makes no flavour sense to do so.

We don't know about the flavor. The hero Gurni might be a low HP, high offensive, battlefield only unit (=

Strictly speaking, Dwarf is not all about defense and development. Many of their cards have similar abilities to Destruction factions. Sacrifice for power, power boosts, power manipulation, etc. The only thing Dwarves don't seem to have is direct damage abilities.

FiendishDevil said:

We'll be seeing Gurni next battle pack, so we'll have to see ^^

But most of the dwarf units seem to have a greater-than-average HP or some other mechanism of enduring i.e. a high toughness. If you removed the Dwarf name from the card, and all loyalty icons which race would you have assigned this card design too?

This card could have been squeezed into Dwarves as a unit of Slayers (those destined to die on the battlefield) and have their deathwish represented by their low HP and battlefield only nature but their artwork, type line and lack of ginger hair clearly depicts them as a group of decently armoured Dwarf Warriors.

Its just the flavour considerations and thought processes that led to the design of this card that interest me.

The thought process that made the new Sliver foil premium deck sucked. No Sliver Queen and adding in Amoeba made me throw up.

Edit: Thought I should throw in some WI stuff... Hopefully Gurni's Elite will mesh flavor wise and thought process wise when the next few BPs come out.

FiendishDevil said:

We all know that was quite blatantly know that was a casual-player cash cow money grab And isn't the Queen on the "won't reprint" list (I forget its name)?

And that's not a single-card design kind of thought process. To use a Magic example, if they brought out a 2W 3/1 with Haste wouldn't you step back and go WTF, isn't this supposed to be black or red, for a minute?

Being on the no-reprint list is just an excuse to keep the singles price on Sliver Queen up in the double digits.

And if a 2W 3/1 haste was made, it would depend on what block it was in. Example, that could very well be a White Rebel Creature named Something Something Crusader.

It is only recently that M:tG has been trying to stick to the strength of the colors in an attempt to get back to the roots of the game. Personally, I feel it was a bad decision made to simply stall the rampant powercreep in the game and also a way to grab more money. "Oh you wanted to play a Blue recursion timmy deck? Too bad. You gotta make a black/green deck and make sure to get the rare black recursion cards and the mythic green super timmy"

FiendishDevil said:

So apart from flavour, what would differentiate between these colours that could do everything? Why would anyone play draw/stall/control blue over draw/stall/control red or green?

FiendishDevil said:

Ihave to agree, dwarves are not all building building building. They use some muscle to do damage. Look at the orcs as well they are not all fighters, they have mechanics and builders in their own right. I say just wait and be patient, let another pack come out before poking at the cards.

A1istor said:

Dwarves indeed do damage, I just want to know why these Battlefield Only Dwarves have 1 HP (which is less than that of lightly armoured Cannon Crew) giving them a 3/1 power/HP weighting usually reserved for Orc. I could accept it representing the fragility of Elves, coupled with their lethality (high power), but as it stands to see a Dwarf with 3 power and 1 HP for no easily discernible flavour reason is jarring given what we've already been given to expect of Dwarves, and their existing Warhammer Fantasy Lore. They don't defend well, and even on the attack they die to any defender bigger than a Snotling :/ Would you really expect this of Elite warriors?

LordMalinari said:

The card library allows for choosing the color you want to play most. You pick the color you like with the supporting cards you like. I simply liked the option of being ABLE to make a black counter/control deck or a white hand destruction/burn deck.

The way cards are being printed now really solidifies the strengths of the colors, but doesn't allow for unique deck designs. Look at Zendikar. Holy crap all the colors are purist standard! You either make a red burn/goblin deck, a black recursion/vampire/undead deck, blue flying/draw/mill/counter deck, green land/timmy deck, or a white healing/protection deck...or a blend of multi colors. There's no room for inbetweens.

LordMalinari said:

Gurni Hero ability text -> All units with Gurni in their name gain Toughness X where X is the number of units with Warrior in the same zone.

I bet that would fix your qualms

FiendishDevil said:

Surely multicolor decks are the inbetweens? If you add counters to green you either make then a) the same potency as blue counters, which diminishes blue's mechanical identity; or b) less effective, in which case a green deck is much more likely to just splash for the stronger blue counters if it needs a counter. I'm not sure how bleeding mechanics excessively could be seen as good for the game? Multicolor cards would have no need to exist, and you close down whole areas of design without opening any more. Why would you run a white discard deck, if all of its discard cards were inferior to blacks. If there were good white discard card and black discard cards, you'd just run the best in a white/black multicolor deck: you haven't achieved anything except making the deck even more reliant on multicolor.

And the suggested Gurni is interesting, but unless he had some solid stats no one would run him, let's be honest, in a game of 3x card copies and 50 card minimums, running a card purely for a soft combo reliant on controlling more Warriors and more Gurni cards isn't the best idea It still wouldn't excuse a block of disciplined-by-definition Dwarven Elite warriors having 1 HP when played on their own.

Let it be known that I'm enjoying this discussion very much and thank everyone who's participated so far ^^

LordMalinari said:

You do have a point. There is a possiblity like said before that the next pack will have an answer, all we can do is wait. PUT SPOILERS UP!

I'll put spoiler up soon as I get the battlepack. Should be arriving in a few weeks.

Yea. I see your point on M:tG. I don't know. I've been burned out on M:tG, thank goodness for Invasion (=

I'm happy order decks have access to cards whose designs were previously limited to destruction. Same for Dark Elves bringing Counterattack to destruction decks.

I'm not keen on restricting a faction onto one design and one archetype : I dislike when, according to your capital, your opponent is able to know your whole deck. For example, building an Orc Milling deck would definately be a great metagame change.

To answer the original question : Gurni's Elite is much closer to a Chaos unit than to an Orcish one. And it's great it is a Dwarf card.

Martin_fr said:

I agree entirely with your point that it is good to introduce previously exclusive mechanics to other factions where appropriate and love Cold One Knights as a card; but having a 3 power 1 HP Dwarf Warrior unit just makes little sense to me. If you had to choose a third faction over Orcs and Chaos to add this mechanical identity (high power, low HP, battlefield only) to, would picking Dwarves be your first choice (except in the case of Dwarf Slayers, which this card does not represent)?

In response to the quoted point, its a case of which out of Ironclaw's Horde (Battlefield only, high power low HP) or Savage Marauders (High power, 1 HP) you consider Gurni's Elite to be closer to, but in my opinion Savage Marauders is often most useful in a non-Battlefield position which sets it apart from the Elite. I suppose if Gurni's Elite wasn't battlefield only, but was just a pumped Savage Maraders for Order, I'd have less of a problem with it as it would represent them being a strong defensive/economic force that would crumble easily if put under concerted pressure (but would still probably QQ about the 1 HP for an Elite Warrior unit.)

In the case of this card being a blend of the two aforementioned cards, Chaos + Orc should not equal any Order race, let alone Dwarf: it should equal, if anything, Dark Elves where this card would be a flavourful fit for a strong but fragile unit such as Witch Elves or even Executioners.

Without mechanical identity for each race, there is little need for Alliance decks, and indeed no real reason to have different races at all as opposed to Universal Mechanic Team A.

(NB, I'm not intending to come across as confrontational or aggressive, I'm just enjoying reading other opinions on this topic)

EDIT: Forgot to mention the idea of an Orc milling deck: It would be great to have, and I could actually seeing it be an option for, say, a Goblin theme, but I'd prefer it if Destruction and Order had different ways of going about the same thing. Perhaps the Goblins would have units that milled when they attacked, or you could corrupt units to mill, or destroy an opponent's support card unless he mills cards equal to the cost of that card and so on.

Each race can share themes like this, they just need to execute them differently in my opinion; and making Gurni's Elite a slightly modified Ironclaw's Horde/Savage Marauder's is not doing this. Perhaps they could have made it: Gurni's Elite 3DDDD 3 Power 1 HP - Battlefield only. Gurni's Elite has toughness 2 while attacking alone. The toughness mechanic ties them to Dwarves, leaves them with low HP, and leaves them just as vulnerable to Chaos kills spells while also allowing their owner more tactical decisions in terms of who to attack with.

Dwarves are known for fighting and kicking butt as much as the Orcs, they should have some offensive cards.

Dunno how well it fits thematically, but the card isn't that great against destruction decks. 3 cost and only 1 hp.

It is essentially a vanilla card. If it had some actual race dependent theme/mechanic behind it I might agree with you, but high this and low that is not a theme nearly as much as a way of balancing a cards cost versus it's ability. The fact that they can do so much damage may be precisely why they are an elite warrior unit. I certainly wouldn't expect an elite warrior unit to hole up in the Kingdom or Quest Zones. *shrug* We all have our own opinions, at this point none of us is really right or wrong.

dormouse said:

Emphasis mine. But if you remove the race and loyalty icons from the card which race would have you assigned it to? I concede it's a toss-up between Chaos and Orc but you certainly wouldn't expect it to be printed as a Dwarf card. Do Dwarf units have a precedent for a 1 HP non-toughness unit?

I'm not trying to prove anyone right or wrong, because (despite the way I worded the title) Gurni's Elite is indeed a Dwarf card and I can't do anything about that, I'm just discussing whether this card mechanically and flavourfully belongs in the Dwarf faction compared to the themes we've seen so far. Just because a card is vanilla doesn't mean it can't have identity: to use MTG as an example, if you saw a 0/3 for one mana you wouldn't expect to see it in red (unless it was a "Wall" etc.) and would probably expect it to be white or blue, or to a lesser extent green, then black then red. Even the weighting of stats can be representative of a theme, and I'm not sure what part of the Dwarf theme having a 1 HP high power unit works with (unless they just added it to the set for the purposes of giving Dwarves a glass cannon card which is sloppy design as there's no real reason for it).

That is the difference between you and me, I wouldn't assume it was any card by stats alone. We don't have enough cards out yet to know what the full range of character costs, abilities, stats, etc. are going to be for any race. Eric and Nate take a much deeper view of these things than some games. You can take a look at the wide variety of stats in AGoT and see that. There are definitely trends that follow factions, but certain traits also have their own trends which sometimes alter or trump that of the faction. That may be the case here. Or it may be tied into Gurni himself, since he is one of the FFG created Waqrhammer heroes we don't know Gurni Thorgrimsonfluff other than this:

"I see the forces of Chaos rampage about our lands. I see Orcs descend from the hills to rob my people of their food and holds. I see filthy Elves steal away our children and torture them. I have swung my hammer every day at our enemies.

- Gurni Thorgrimson"

and this:

"Gurni gets more deadly with each attachment he is given."

Now if he is a low HP hero who gains HP or toughness based on how many attachment support cards he has then his elite make sense as also being low HP. It is just way to early to be making assumptions about what is and is not a card that should be aligned with a faction. Even corruption. I won't be the least be surprised to see corruption in other Destruction races, and wouldn't be too surprised to see some means of turning corruption in Order eventually or restoring corrupted cards outside of the High Elves.

I should also point out that if you reread the various spoilers for the upcoming Battle Packs you'll see that mechanics and themes are not necessarily exclusive to one race. Gates of Sigmar for instance is going to be a means to your capitol from burning. How it accomplishes that, by heal, redirect, cancel, moving is still unknown, though I'd guess it is going to be a damage cancel or redirect.

BTW, there's that orc unit that gives Thoughness to all wounded units. Shouldn't it belong to the Dwarf faction ?

Gurni's Elite is probably the Dwarve's response to this unit stolen from their faciton in the first place

Fluff-wise, we could consider the 3/1 to correspond to the unit dealing as much damage as possible before getting killed to the last man (er... dwarf), while the 1/4 Black Orcs are a unit usually fleeing combat as soon as they are confronted. Just an idea to help living with this card (because I don't care at all about background and fluff when it comes to deckbuilding).