Hmmm got my skavenblight threat battlepack a few weeks ago and integrated it into a couple of quick games tonight. After opening the pack my initial fears about the uselessness of many of the cards and the imbalance toward destruction were pretty quickly proven.

I really like this game (and all the other LCGs - i play and enjoy them all) and i know balancing cards across 7 races + neutral cards in a 20 slot pack must be difficult (soon to get a little easier with the 60 card battlepacks), but im a little annoyed at the first battlepack contents. Its like the marketing / sales guys at FFG were in control of the contents. So I say they kinda suck because whilst there are few bad cards there are serious balance and playability issues in this first pack. There are 4 base decks / races in the starter box, 2 of which get next to nothing from this first Battlepack.

Oddly, it only contains 4 skaven unit cards and 3 attachment cards total. Not much of a threat really. to top that off, part of the skaven heroes special ability is dependent on the number of skaven you control (yes Including him i know) - but you can currently only have 3 other skaven units in your deck of 50 cards! surely a more playable hero could have been chosen for the first pack and greyseer thanquol saved for a later pack, or more basic units should have been included in this pack. But no, I can almost hear the sales dudes saying "hey, if we put Thanquol in battlepack 1 then everyone will really need to buy future battlepacks to make him more useful... kerrrrrching!!!"

Then we get 7 new dark elf cards too! all pretty playable and more threatening than the skaven. A solution would have been to include less dark elf and more skaven cards.

But then there are then only 3 new High Elf cards most of which have such a high penalty cost that they are not really playable considering how few high elf cards are currently available (8 total - only 3 of which earn you a high elf icon to lower their cost with) assuming you only own 1 set. I can hear the sales committee saying "right, now we will put in these high cost high elf cards so players will have to buy they expansion to make them useful as they certainly cant splash with them!"

Ok, then both Empire and Dwarves get a total of only 4 new cards each and whilst they are all fine you cant help feeling the Order forces are a little hard done by. its basically 22 destruction cards vs just 11 (really only 8 playable) order cards. I know there is a metatheme here of being outnumbered by the hordes of destruction but this could be done in a more balanced way. I played chaos tonight and got to add at least 14 new cards into my card pool not including the neutral cards which we drafted. But my friend only got to add 4 dwarf cards and was understandably underwhelmed by the whole thing... There shoulda been less elf stuff here and more skaven + the 4 core race cards. You coulda just put the elves into the expansion. see http://info.wsisiz.edu.pl/~szczesnj/warhammer-invasion-LCG.php for the card breakdown.

Anyway, my point to FFG if anyone is listening is that I would have thought that balance, quality and playability in early battlepack card inclusions will build you a far more loyal customer base (and future $$$) than teasing players with cards which are only useful if you buy future battlepacks or expansions. Im a card game addict and will probably buy just about everything LCG but i dare say there are a few newby LCG / Invasion / Order fans who you are at risk of losing with this approach.

A final bit about balance - i understand a few years ago the AGOT CCG card game took a massive dive in popularity (and sales im sure) after i believe the fun but very unbalanced Crown of Suns expansion came out. So id argue that keeping your player base happy while continuing to attract new addic... err players is key to the success of all your LCG lines too.

If there is no sales committee corruption at play here then forgive me, but you still would do well to pay more attention to the balance / quality / playability ratios in future battlepack lines.

Still... I cant wait to play this game again!

Try also including the Path of the Zealot BP too. I mean they came out pretty much in very close temporal distance from one another, especially for those that weren't on the game the day it came out (which is most people).

However, I will support some of your comments.

I bought 3 of the skavenblight BPs. I should have bought two. There are NO copies of cards in this BP that are duplicates, there are only triplicates and singles. The singles consist of a few Heros (that you can only have one of in play anyhow), a Support card that seems like you don't really need 3 of in a deck, and a few Tactic cards, that, though useful, again, aren't neccesarily triplicate-needed in a deck, or are quite corner case.

The only one I'm happy about having 3 of that were singles is the Empire Tactic, and the High Elf quest. I suspect there is something nice that one will be able to do with the latter, and the former can be played in a future or present beautiful "I move all your dudes to your quest zone with empire tech, and increase all your costs with dwarf tech and now you can only draw one card bwahahahaha, 3 turns later I have mad stuff you have none. Game" kinda deck.

Otherwise, yes the Skaveblight BP is good, a little slanted towards destro, but not every pack can have a perfect mix...

There is a meta theme which is of utmost importance in the LCG world. The idea is that each supplement pack tells a piece of a story and the cycle is self balancing. Considering the amount of people who were complaining how weak Chaos was especially versus Dwarfs they need the boost, at least based on player commentary.

Marketing concerns are paramount to any game company. Perfectly balanced games with little eye to marketing has been the number one reason why so many CCG's have failed. Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon are brilliantly marketed and both games are so far from balanced it is laughable to even think this is a concern of theirs. Including a high percentage of cards for races that will shortly be getting an expansion makes a ton of sense marketing wise, as well as to help satisfy players who are really wanting to play those races. A skaven hero who gets better and better as the cycle progresses is such an obvious move to get people to invest, and at the same time keeps him from being a bomb card right off tha back. That is a form of balance.

In regards to Thrones, the reason why there was a off after Crown of Suns was because that was when the rotation policy and influence was introduced to the game. A major new mechanic and rotation always causes a off in a player base. Suns was not perfectly balanced itself, but it was balanced in the meta game. When Suns was introduced it made a nice splash for Martell and that was it's primary focus in regards to balance, just as Flight of the Dragons and A Sea of Storms before it with the inclusion of Targaryen and Greyjoy respectively.

The fact is, even with the new release format, BP's are not going to be perfectly balanced within themselves, but part of the larger cycle as well as causing shifting in the greater game. This is part of what distinguishes an LCG from a board game with expansions.

Instead of thinking of each BP as its own separate mini expansion think of it more as the whole corruption cycle together as one expansion as this is how it was designed. So I don't agree the BP sucks or that any of them will suck as they have to be taken together to get the whole picture.

Thanks for your thoughts. We need to keep in mind that most of the thoughtful posters here are probably long term committed gamers who know how stuff works in this biz, but my concerns were trying to see from that perspective and that of a newby who just got into their first LCG. So here are a few quick responses;

Thanks Vermillian , Yep i know integrating path of the zealot probably wouldnt have softened the blow but it hasnt arrived in australia yet . Still, the idea with LCGs is that you should be able to integrate each BP as they come, obviously the first one to come it extra important to the initial evolution of the cycle meta... my argument that the first BP is wickedly unbalanced with many unplayable cards still stands but of course i know this will change when ive got a bunch of them together and im looking forward to that time. But again thats my point, it obviously kinda forces people into buying more BPs to make use of the first. And that is a little annoying.

Dormouse I agree with most of your points about the importance of marketing. Your point about getting people to invest by cunning selection of cards which make more sense later being good for marketing mirrors mine in a more sympathetic light, but the selection of cards in a BP is an obscure part of marketing - FFG do very well in the standard ways of marketing, and my arguments about a little more balance and playability of cards straight out of the gates are good marketing sense too "wow that first battlepack was filled with goodies for everyone, of course it makes sense to buy the others on that assumption!". To take one example Im taking the skaven cards out of the chaos deck until more arrive, they are just too random and weak individually and collectively to be worth it for now - so in a sense the BP failed to fulfill its promise and i have some temporarily unusable cards. Same goes for the high elf cards. Of course meta cycle shifts make things exciting as the game evolves but with better card choice in BP1 they could also have been more playable out of the gates. the fact remains that any destruction forces got a pool of 18 ish cards to choose from whether you play Orcs or Chaos (7 skaven + 7 Dark elf + 4 of either orcs or chaos), wheras either Empire and Dwarves get only 4 or 5 cards to add to their deck construction pool. thats a difference of over 3 or 4 to 1 which is just too imbalanced at a BP level IMHO regardless of larger cycle balance.

Toq indeed im very familiar with the LCG battlepack model / cycle having bought everything that they have released across all LCGs so far and understand that they have their own story arc (vaguely) and are not each mini expansions. However, each Cycle has 2 key aspects upon which we can judge it;

1 how good the whole 6 BP cycle is in term of card mix and thematic deck construction goodness,

2 and how "good" each BP is as it comes out relative to what has come before it because we theoretically are meant to buy and integrate cards as they come in episodic BPs each month. "Good" for me being balance, quality and immediate playability.

Guys, it makes no sense to justify a poorly chosen set of cards in a BP by saying all will be well in another 5 months! Im sure it probably will but i spent my money today and i want gratification today sers! I opened this pack after a long wait and was immediately disappointed with it for all the reasons above. that is not a good thing to do to a player interesting in forming a long term relationship with the game. I'll be fine but its like a second date turning up wearing embarassingly mismatched and inapproriate clothes! I still like whats in the clothes but it was an awkward and disappointing second date. this feedback should be the FFG marketing guys worst fear off the back of a new LCG BP1.

Oh and the smaller battlepack cards really do kinda suck too.

The reason im bothering is that FFG does listen, eg they listening to serious gripes about the first badly compiled AGOT LCG Kings of the Sea expansion. Theres my 2 bits anyway.

Still looking forward to my next game though...

FFG listens if you post it in the proper channel. They seldom read the forums. Also it is too late to do anything abotu the Corruption Cycle. Its been doen designed and printed by now I'd wager. Also the original core set released at Gencon was actually printed too big was what I heard... wasn't that the case?

Not too many of the Skavenblight cards are useless come on now!?! Gurni's Elite is great.
Nordland Halbadiers will/are going to make for a great surprise card to a planned attack!
Any High Elf card right now will be tough to integrate (please DO consider though that not every card is instantly going to be made for the here and now!!! Not everyone is going to know this game exists untila few battle packs in to the game really come oN!).
Spider Riders fantastic.
Choosen of Tzeentch can be good for chaos in mid game.
Again same statement with the Dark Elves cards.
Greyseer will be fine with inclusion of the skaven in the same pack even, with a mix of some other faction. Sure Skaven in this BP aren't playable BY THEMSELVES. But you can, and I WILL put them in some Destro decks (clan rats are hot enough if this were one's second purchase after the Core set).
Marius is a bit corner case, and is, as you put it, 'worthless' if you don't consider that however more often than not I find many Orc players are using warpstone excavation, and that IS useful. And as a generic 4 cost 2 power FOUR hitpoints unit, that's actually not bad at all.
War Paint can actually legitimately gain Orcs quite a bit of power, and is better for long term orcyness than the one shot Waagh.
Warplightening cannon has limited use ATM, though can be good for Chaos for some power boost, as its a bit lacking in it for itself.
Abandonned Mine has its limited uses. Imagining some dwarf deck that's getting free developments. Its card advantage. Very hot.
Forge has limited use ATM, but it CAN make certain decks have some significantly CHEAP CHEAP unit boosts. Right now yes limited.
Stand Your Ground can be great as we're getting back our weak Gurni's Elite, right?
Infiltrate can work wonders with a very difficult to play Empire/Dwarf control.
Steel's Bane, again another echo of the difficulty of High Elf play right now... OK so another 'useless' card.
Bolt of Change is good for a surprise, good to break out your developments as fighters after your Empire opponent has used up his no development vomit card.
We Need Your Blood is almost useful out of its box without Dark Elves! 2 cost for a -1 HP and +1 HP for you?!? YES?!?
Repair the Waystones is impossible to play nearly ATM yes sure.

Ok so what is that... HE cards are 3 cards in it are tough to fit in anything ATM, obviously. 2/3 Dark Elves are tricky to fit (We Need your Blood almost probably has its own independent use seperate from a DE deck). The Skaven hero has limited use sure, granted. I'm not ruling OUT Marius as useless at all. I will say boo to Forge.

Ok of the 20 different cards, I agree that there are 7 of them as immediately useful. Of these 5 of them are single copies, the other two are triplicates, making a total of 11 cards of the 40 cards being 'useless' (but making you scratch your chin and being excited abotu what the future may hold for these 'useless' cards!).

... Or maybe I'm crazy.

Maybe it's just me, but MAN that Dormouse is a smart fellow. Whenever he has something to say about this game, I recommend that folks sit back and listen. He knows his stuff.

Yes Vermillian I agree completely that the cards on their own are individually good / interesting / potentially great, I never really said otherwise. I said "So I say they kinda suck because whilst there are few bad cards there are serious balance and playability issues in this first pack. There are 4 base decks / races in the starter box, 2 of which get next to nothing from this first Battlepack."

My annoyance was only due to imbalance, and the marketing tease factor, not card quality. But yes when I said "useless cards" i really shoulda said "temporarily useless" to be more accurate for sure.

None of the above comments have shifted my opinion for what its worth. They could have got the balance a little better. I know its too late for this block of BPs but maybe they will consider it in the future.

The balancing that FFG would be doing is for the CYCLE not a single BP.

You''re right. I totally missed that point. My apologies... however...

Empire: Got instant unit and a control tactic.
Chaos: Got 3 cost unit that can burn some things and a direct damage tactic.
Dwarves: Got Grungi unit which is nice quick damager, and a way to get this fragile body back
Orcs: Long term strategy attachment, and Early game spider riders unit.
HE and DE: Yeah sure, not a ton, but they got 3 cards in this pack vs the other races getting 2! One of which is actually useful for the other (destruction) races even WITH the 'penalty' for out of faction play.

There were 3 more skaven/destruction cards, 1 order only card, and then the rest were straight nuetrals... Remind me again which two races got nothing?

Yes it was slanted towards Destro... how many TCGs have you played? Few TCG sets have perfect balance in its 'color wheel'. For instance in UFS, Fire was doing pretty hot prior to the SCIV set 2 release... In MtG its a known fact (as of sseveral years ago haven't checked balance lately) that one color tends to get better cards on a set by set basis than do the other colors... and so on.

Yeah, in general I think my resistence to concluding an argreement to you is due to the subject thread title. AN aspect of the Skavenblight battle pack kinda sucks... right?

Also WARNING STAT MODIFICATION ALERT! You posted that there were 18 or 20 cards for destro to use of use. NO sir, there are also 4 more nuetral cards to use for them! Making their total a whopping 22 to 24!

However tacking those on to the Empire/Dwarf usable totals makes Order at 8. 24 to 8 is a 3 to 1 ratio, not a 5 to 1 ratio.

Yeah, conceded, the SP BP was a bit slanted towards destro......

How would you have released this battle pack if you had the say over it? What would your ratios have been? Perhaps make the High Elf cards more splashable?

Yeah indeed i probably coulda said "why the skavenblight BP card mix sucks..." that would be more accurate but it is what i was alluding to when i said "kinda". artistic license hey .

Yeah true i excluded the neutrals from my stats because we draft them before each play session so usually get them equally split (we dont each own the game or BPs we just choose decks, draft the neutrals and construct from there). So lets agree that depending on how you own and use the cards the cardpool choice ratio in this BP is somewhere between 3 to 1 and 5 to 1. Either way that range of ratios wouldnt fit my definition of "a bit slanted" but rather totally unbalanced - see what happens when you put 3 dudes on one end of see-saw and 1 on the other! Even at just 2 to 1 I would argue thats too much imbalance. As I said earlier I think 3 to 2 imbalance or thereabouts is fine if it counterbalances in the next pack or soon after.

All my stats are based on the assumption of just 1 version of the game or BP. A fair assumption for most casual players.

So if I had my dreamjob at FFG i would have;

1. Had a roughly a 3 to 2 balance in order vs destro card pool choice or vice versa per BP,
2. put in far more splashable high elf card units (with lower penalty costs) and more units. Including just this first BP they now have 1 hero, 1 mage unit, and 1 cavalry unit - only 3 elf unit cards in total which really affects the playability / efficiency of all their other stuff. Darkelves have 7 units with a lower splash penalty i think already, on top of the new skaven cards!
3. Put in a better and more independent Skaven hero (i presume more are coming) if possible and brought out Thanquol in pack 3 maybe where he is arguably more playable and still gets better later.
4. and / or put in more skaven cards in place of some of the Dark elf cards, or even more skaven in place of all the dark and high elf cards, with a few more counterbalancing order cards to even up the ratios a little better. This would have backed up the "skaven blight threat" title more, and hopefully there will be lots of elves invading sometime soon anyway via the expansion. but thats more controversial and breaks the "everyone should get something everytime" rule for the 6 core races.
5. made a Battlepack Balance and Playability Playtest Committee headed by someone who looks just like me, or sacked the current one if there is one .

****, now i really want to play again!

Vermillian or anyone else got other ideas for better balance? Or am I weird for thinking those order lovers out there got a little ripped off in that first pack?

Actually Ive just had a peek at the Path of the Zealot battlepack and there are some other bizarre choices there too. The high elves get one unsplashable boltthrower to continue the trend...

The skaven get a only a single new unit card along with the currently limited use Chittering Horde "Action: Search the top five cards of your deck. You may reveal any number of Skaven cards found and put them into your hand. Shuffle the rest of the searched cards into your deck." I challenge anyone to come up with a horde which even squeeks out of this card at the moment. The 7 skaven cards total in Skavenblight and 2 in Zealot give you 9 skaven cards total. Assuming you happen to get Chittering horde in your opening hand there are 8 skaven card left from 42 or 43 cards, a little less than 1 in 5 cards. So even with an optimal draw you have about an even chance of getting just 1 card to replace it. Sure its a possible cantrip but thats a classic example of a card which should have come later in the cycle when it should be more usable.

I really hope this trend doesn't continue. sigh.

I still think you are viewing this all wrong but it's also clear you aren't really interested in other view points.

You cannot view any of the cycles for any of the games with only a single BP, CP or AP it has to be taken as a whole. Otherwise you are only seeing part of the picture, it's like seeing the Sistine Chapel and only seeing the clouds.

Toqtamish said:

This point was already been addressed by Marduk, and I agree with his reply : eventhough BP are part of a larger set, we can still critizice them individually for 2 linked reasons :

- only a subpart of them are available, so, should we remain silent for several months and stop deckbuilding until the whole cycle is released ?

- Marduk's "trouble" (sorry my vocabuIary is a bit limited) about BP isn't for the whole Cycle it is about that particular first BP.

That said, I disagree with Marduk about this first BP being a poor product. If you detail each individual card, you'll find out that half of them are clearly unplayable (competitively speaking) for now, but bringing "20 must-have cards" isn't the aim of a BP. It's true aim (how I see it at least) is to bring in 20 new cards, some of them shifting a bit the metagame.

For example, this first BP added a bit of speed to my Orc deck (Spider Riders), added some resilience to my Dwarf deck (Stand your Ground), nothing to my Chaos deck, and increased hand control in my Empire deck (Infiltrate). The second BP (which should arrive tomorrow at my LGS ) will bring in some big power to my Chaos deck (Lord of Pus, and Bloodsworn), nothing to my Orc (perhaps the Veteran Sellswords), etc...

So, in the end, this game is centered around decks that are upgraded with every passing BP, instead of all brand new decks built around each BP.

Murdock:

There are 40 cards in the pack. It appears the pattern is to have 10 single copies and 30 triplicates (or ten cards that are triplicated). This is 20 different cards.

If split between ord/destro you were hoping for something like 4 single ord copies 9 copies of triplicates (for 3 cards that are triplicated), for 8 new order cards. And then perhaps 5 single destro copies again and lets say 9 copies of triplicates yet again (so that we can have some nuetral cards but one more single copy occurance due to the need of skaven as the main theme).

We have three races to cover. WE CANNOT NOT include elves! (doubel negative for the win!)
For order, that gives us around 3/2/2 +1 nuetral guy like Marius? This is actually what happened in the SB BP! I suppose your biggest thing you could actually complain about legitimately (but hey, who cares about legitimate complaints ya know? lol) is that the HE cards were a bit high loyalty costed and they only had one heroic unit... What would you have done? We ONLY have room for two cards that are triplicated... Do you recommend we short empire or dwarfs their triplicate and make the high elves have a triplicated card slot? THEN we could feel justified at this stage to make a non unique unit in there (but then we'd really be shorting dwarves/empire). But to make a non-unique, low loyalty cost unit a single in the first BP brings a bad precedent. Its like saying "yeah people... you're gonna have to buy three of these right off. Too bad!".

How, sir, not generally how, would you have packed the order side of that BP?!?

MY best case thoughts would have been to have had different High Elf cards in there, one's that are more 'splashable' as you say. However if you look at the HE cards included in there, they do things empire/dwarfs have not done so far. And Empire/Dwarfs tend to go for the end game... so they tend to HAVE the resources to spend on a few copies of a high loyalty HE card... see why these inclusions almost make sense?

On the destro side, it looks almost golden, except the Skaven hero to you, right? Who seems a bit too... what... Skaveny? You'd like a Skaven hero a little more generically useful. Maybe this card Does Not Exist / CANNOT exist due to some secret Eric Lang design matrix!? Even then, he's a low 3 cost unit that swings for 2 power, and potentially much much more. Orcs decks are already tossing the skaven in their decks, along with a few niche chaos builds (yes the builds are insane, but ya know).

Perhaps we should not have had that Warplightnening Cannon should have been a unit perhaps? ... I can agree there.

So changes I would condone in a time travel universe would be to make the HE cards lower loyalty... not sure about how to release a single copy of a unit that isn't unique properly... And also to change the Warplightening Cannons to something that isn't a support card.

To Toq: DIsagree that the OP isn't willing to listen to people.

To Martin: Good way of putting it, I think OP wanted MORE things to be of use to decks. Perhaps just his decks? IDK.

My problem is I just believe the OP is wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. I think it stems from a very understandable place though, the "what did I get for my decks?" mentality. I on the hand am constantly ripping deck sapart and building new ones rather than having one specific deck of any given race or alliance where I am evaluating the cards based on how much they help me. I evaluate the cards based on the context of a race as a whole and how it helps their overall card pool. Does it increase a strength? Does it shore up a weakness? Does it hint at new themes or tech not currently represented by the existing cardpool?

We'll just have to agree to disagree. I see the balance of a given BP based on how it promotes that packs theme/story, how it affects the races card pool, and the balance between the other races of the cardpool. Balance in a Battle Pack? I don't care. I am not th eleast bit concerned that one race may not have gotten the best or as many great cards as one or two other races. I am concerned with the shifted meta. Did those couple of cards that Race X get cause it to slip, rise, or stay the same in its standings? That to me is the only concern on a BP by BP and Cycle by Cycle comparison. YMMV

It's just a single BP. I'm not going to judge them over one. I'll fully evaluate after one cycle and see how well they tackled it. It just seems a bit silly to give a positive or negative review on it all so early especially with so much ground still to cover.

Addendum to Dormouse chat:

I expect some sets to have slants towards one or more races. If a certain race weren't slightly stronger than others at several times throughout a games life span, the game is sometimes deemed boring and too balanced. M I rite?

Hey Toq. I am only judging the first BP here not the cycle as I've said all along. i thought we were all having a reasonable discussion about card balance in BPs in context of the cycle meta here. You're free to opt out if you have no actual argument backed up with a little logic to contribute or... just post whatever opinion. I'll respond to your arguments when i see one, there are plenty of other good ones above to listen to and think about.

So what is an LCG? How can we judge it at at various levels? I think my tiered assessement argument is valid as Martin agrees, in fact this game will be judged at 3 levels:

1 - the game (great we all agree)

2 - the cycles,

3 - the battlepacks.

Its a logical extension of the LCG concept. From http://www.cthulhulcg.com/news-lcg-guide.html , the only place i can find an LCG definition, come 2 salient quotes (My hightlight);

"The Core Sets are followed by monthly installments of expansion packs, each a set of forty fixed cards, providing an ongoing and regular addition to the available card pool. These expansion packs add customization, variety, and an ongoing “story” to everyone’s experience with the Core Game."

and

"The constantly expanding cardpool provides more frequent additions to your cardpool, with the potential of new decktypes and strategies to explore in every release. Instead of waiting four months for new cards to play with, you have the excitement of getting new cards for your decks every month."

My argument about some poor card choices (eg Thanquol - yes on the presumption there is another less dependent Skaven Hero coming up) and some numerical race imbalance and splash playability is based on this presumption - the excitement of getting new cards for your decks every month - the excitement of the new card hit is the gas in EVERY CCG and LCG sales engine (sure FFG dont guarantee EVERY card will work straight up but hey im working on a broad application of their definition).

Martin i see your arguments re cards in BPs but i just felt they should tone down the imbalance a little ie from 4 to 1 choice ratio to 3 to 2 or something, and its not so much poor product, as a disappointing mix. I would hope that when i open each BP i get some (not perfect) balance of cards which are as far as possible BOTH immediately playable in the context of what has come before AND potentially grow in power or comboliciousness as the cycle unfolds. Possibly hard to achieve yes but that would be an ideal BP in my book. If the BPs unfolded well over the whole cycle then i would consider that a great cycle because of the well managed incremental evolution based on the presumption you play every month and integrate the new goodies as you go. Otherwise FFG may as well have just made fixed expansion sets which arrive every 4 months. Something like Summoner Wars i guess.

Every CCG block / expansion / cycle is judged both on its own merits and in context of the legally playable competative card pool etc, both as they come up and retrospectively in totality. its unavoidable. LCG BPs are of course more micro in scale but Ive yet to see a logical argument as to why they should not be judged in the context of what you get and how it affects your current card pool. That is precisely the LCG model! More incremental meta game evolution - so why not give it some attention at that scale? we have to reserve judgement of the whole cycle till later anyway.

I do admit it is hard to judge a BP when you dont know the whole cycle cardlist from which it is chosen and so in a sense i may be being hasty but im just trying to articulate me and my buddies immediate reaction to opening the battle pack and choosing and playing with the cards. I think thats a reasonable thing to do. Hey we aint gonna quit, the game is too good, but the first BP could've been more satisfying for us for sure. I wonder if anyone knows how FFG go about making their decisions on what cards from each set goes in each booster. They used to blog it a bit for AGOT - do they for this? Id be interested to know.

Vermillian I would vote for you to be on the FFG BP balance committee no doubt. you've the head for numbers and cards to be sure. But as I said its hard to make theoretical choices when you dont know the cards. Good point re the HE cards being splashable in resource heavy decks. Yep I also would've probably removed the warplightening cannon (3) and put in another Skaven unit (3 card) making Thanquol more playable. Also replaced the Dark elf event (3) with a splashable High elf infantry unit (3) of some sort to back up the single HE heroes, mages and cavalry and spells. I dont have the headspace for more right now but that would have been a start. By the way I was the recipient of all the destro madness not my friend, and i dont as yet have a favourite tuned "deck". So i think Im being pretty impartial. My buddy chose to play dwarves before we ripped the Battle pack open and then i watched his face drop when we laid out the new stuff .

Dormouse I dont think our 2 views are incompatible at all - as an ex MTG addict I see new cards in the same meta combo construction way - (1 bomb card is worth 10 crud ones), but id like that mind trip to start from a more balanced array of cards per volume of $$ exchanged. It really cant be that hard.

Hey guys i did say "kinda" suck not "totally"! Heh.

They aare incompatible, because I don't think examining a BP in exclusion to the game in which it is to be played as being valid at all. The BP's very specifically note that it is not a stand alone product and requires the Core Set to be playable. As such any examination and evaluation without that caveat in mind is already going beyond FFG's stated purposes of the product. To be a little facitious for the moment to make my point, I can discuss how good the cards are at being used as coasters, or spoke decorations in a bicycle, but none of these were part of FFG's intentions either, so what is the point?

The two quotes you pulled from FFG actually support my entire point, that the cards are part of an ongoing story and cards in it are selected for this reason, and they are intended to be used with the entire cardpool and therefor if you feel the need to judge it should be done in the context by which they were created. Now if you want to say that the HE cards are unsplashable (and I've fought an Dwarf Turtle deck that includes every HE card and got my ass handed to me, so I'm not to keen on agreeing with this at all) because there is no HE Capitol and so no way to get additional resources into your pool in a number to make them playable in ANY Dwarf or Empire deck, then you have a valid argument to make. I still won't agree with it, but the point itself directly addresses claims and intentions of FFG, not an arbitrary standard you have come up with.

I have already made my argument, you can't evaluate the cards in a vacuum. If this was the only product avaialable at all for the game, then I could see an argument for "cards kinda suck" but if we take them as a whole with the Core set as Dormouse said and the next cards in the next BP and all the ones to come I don't see how they suck at all. Everyone got something which is the best to be hoped for with a pack trying to cover 6 factions as well as neutral cards.

Marduk:

One can judge a booster expansion for sure, as can one judge these cards. Keep in mind though.

SOME cards need to exist to make one scratch one's head and say "hmmm I wonder what this card is for?!?" or "I can't wait till more BLAH cards come out to throw this in the mix!". You need that certain antici ....

pation effect.

Regarding your suggested changes to this BP:

We cannot let HEs get a 4th card over the DEs! What are you thinking?!? Really, you'd nix that DE Tactic for a (non-unique) triplicate HE unit? ... I mean I suppose then we could swap out one of the single copy HE cards for a DE single card... a support card would've been nice, but then Order would be ahead in the pack in total right? Good or bad? ... Maybe HEs DON'T have splashable (read low cost) non-unique unit cards in this cycle!!! ugh? ... So point conceded. A swap on HE and DE would've been nice.

Warplightening Cannon removal in replace of a generic Skaven unit might also be a bit weird too. First, pending its existence, second, if this secondary Skaven unit is not splashable in a Destro deck, like the Warplightening Cannon most certainly IS (I mean Forge and this, in some mid game corrupting Chaos deck?), would now make 3 more cards entirely useless for all but a Skaven player, where as it is now, this is 3 more cards for Destro (and therefore also 3 more cards for DEs, which, though still 'in the lead' compared to the HEs, need card pool too). Even Steven on this concept. Not convinced there's a need for removal of WL Can actually...

The Skaven hero argument is covered by my above statement on the need for antici

pation effects. So 6 of one, 1/2 a dozen of the other on this point.

And why was your friend complaining about his dwarves he got! ITS SICK! Those aggresive dwarf killas and that back from the dead for one of his hero units perhaps? Tres hawt!