I think evaluating the BP on its own is perfectly valid. I mean, they do represent a commitment to invest around £9 a month which is not, I grant you, a lot of money, but it is money. Taking the cards from one BP and looking at them and thinking "I'm not terribly impressed with these" is thus a valid decision. "Skavenblight Threat" is a product on its own - they didn't produce it in a box like the core set with the other sets of its cycle, and thus it can be judged, both as a product individually and as the first release for its series of cards.

Granted, it's equally valid to delay judgement on the first booster until you have a wider idea of what the metagame holds, but nonetheless a pitfall the expansion must strive to avoid is a failure to generate a decent level of excitement with the cards contained in the pack. Also, they should probably measure them before they go out. Just saying.

Hey dormouse and toq it seems you are misunderstanding my argument somehow. I aint braindead yet; of course the BPs are not a standalone product, they are to be played along with the core sets and realistically the entire available card pool. I am not evaluating these cards "in a vacuum" or in "exclusion to the game in which it is to be played". I am doing quite the opposite; I am evaluating the mix of cards, the balance of immediately playable options made available to each race of each BP as it comes out relative to the currently usable or known card pool, as many episodic card game analyses have done before at the block or expansion level. And im saying there were things that annoyed me and my friend after i parted with my money and opened the first BP. But yes I am excluding the future from my analysis as, well, its kinda hard to predict. But i am basing my critique on the assumption that somewhere in the rest of the cycle were cards which would have been more immediately playable out of the gates in BP 1. and the race balance could have been better. The same should apply to future BPs. And of course all of these can also be retrospectively assessed once they are all released and im sure they will be. But some of us agree that the game is analyzable in bite sized chunks because that how it comes out and is clearly meant to be played. Integrate the new cards as they come out for a more incremental meta game evolution than just about any other card game i know of, that is arguably the reason for the success of the LCG model. Surely the way we analyze games needs to shift with the way their release pattern changes...

We're all players entitled to our opinions and if some people love the mystery of cards which are currently suboptimal or unplayable in the context of the current carpool because there is the "whats gonna happen with this card in the future" factor then that is great. Honestly. But for the reasons I outlined in the first post i find it pretty annoying. And i think its probably feasible, as ive said before, to release a reasonable (not perfectly) race balanced mix of cards in each BP which are immediately playable AND potentially get better as the cards pool grows. I think thats pretty key to the casual players out there rather than the more addicted among us who will inventory every card in their brains combo database and make use of it down the track sometime when the brain DB sends a combo alert upon the entry of new data (i work this way too dormouse).

IMHO the story arc is a pretty thin veneer of sales schtick . There weren't even any "story" inserts to put the cards into some kind of context, as other posters have argued somewhere on these boards. Stories are what we make them by our card choices anyway right? Anyway im sure we could argue forever about creative interpretations re stories so lets just not. not in this thread anyway.

Vermillian yes we could have dropped some of the less splashable HE singles too, and made room for more dwarf or Emprie singles. was assuming it, just didnt say it sorry. but this was part of my point - the DEs got 7 cards (total) to add to the destro pool in this BP and the HEs got 3 total. so my suggestion would have evened out the numbers to 6 HE vs 4 DE total - not too unfair given the other 7 other destro only cards in this pack... thats the general point im trying to make. the destro forces were spoiled for choice and the order decks get numerically very few options although as you say the few they get may be indeed be fine.

And sorry i still think you are kinda missing my point too. My dwarf friends face dropped not because of the specific order cards but because of the negligable number of options available for him to even consider - essentially 2 dwarf options (4 dwarf cards total or max 8 cards if you include the high cost HE cards as dormouse argues is doable and the dubious witchhunter), excluding the drafted neutrals, while i laid out 18 ( 7 Skaven, 7 DE and 4 Chaos) cards to consider adding to my chaos deck on the night! He didnt give a rats arse about the skaven hero - that was just me thinking he would've been better arriving later.

BP card balance / choice across races is a different factor than individual card quality. Surely both count in this LCG format?

Anyway I'm guessing we may never all agree on this issue and thats OK too.

Actually, that is a good point - the story veneer to this is pretty dashed thin. No story inserts and no general theme beyond "look out! Some rat-men! Also other guys."

The High Elves for three single copy cards, and the dark elves got 2 triplcates and one single. That should have been swapped around a tad, yes, agreed.

Yes your dwarf player friend can be upset that you got some DE you COULD splash in to your deck. Point conceeded, that, for a dwarf or empire player's perspective (because there are no HE players as of yet), destro got more 'useable cards' to those of destro and SHOULD you be restricting yourself to only buying one pack of the thing and SHOULD you be restricting yourself to evenly splitting/drafting the nuetrals between you and someone else, this factor is even more significant.

HOWEVER the BP DOES offer things to Order. Note also, that nothing is saying that each player must BUY each BP either. You may feel free to hold off on one with a higher ratio of Order to Destro, which is bound to happen at some time. However, if you would like access to the 4 cards for empire (6 if you buy multiple packs) and/or the 4 cards for dwarfs (again 6 here if multiples are acquired), along with the 5 copies (or up to 9 if you so wish to buy multiples) of perfectly acceptable nuetral cards then you are free to acquire this pack.

Potentially 21 more cards to add to an Order deck IS of use. Granted, Destro got a few more cards to play with themselves, and also at a cheaper (monetarily speaking) entry point.

You have yet to really give your point of view and detail how YOU would have split this pack up in a feasible manner... So, while I accept your criticism, I am still wondering if there is a significant enough of a divergence that COULD have been done to this BP that would have made any sense.

Makes little sense to me. You quote the FFG copy and then warp it to support what you want the BP's to be rather than just taking it at face value. You say you ignore the rest of the cycle not to be released because it is in the future and hard t5o predict, yet you make all your claims about how the pack could have been balanced by considering cards that you are assuming are in the cycle and will be released in the future. You say you evaluate the cards in BP based on what is available, but all your comments are about what the cards in the pack are and how they compare to each other rather than what place and role they fulfill in the environment.

I stand by my statements that it sounds more like players were not happy at being able to plug and play cards into pre-existing decks and that had more to do with what was playable or splashable than an honest evaluation of the cards in the BP and how it affects the metgame, rather than your specific deck. That your entire argument seems at odds with itself and more of a justification of your feelings than a coherent argument about why these cards kind of suck...

And as to the "storyline" and lack of insert... *shrug* I never expected on. I assumed the verbage on the boxes and the cards themselves with their flavor text would create a bit of the story's plot and the specifics were things we as players would fill in with our actual play, especially for those playing league games. I guess I just have very different expectations.

And I want to apologize, rereading this and osme of my other posts seems like the wording is harsh, I don't mean it to be, I may disagree with you, but I don't disrespect you. Finding the right words to convey the proper emotional "tone" is frustratingly hard. I hope you'll believe me when I say I don't mean to come off as an asshat, I just enjoy a lively debate.

Yep Vermillian im glad to see we agree on a starting point for how race balance and card playability could have been a little better in this first BP. If I find time i will try to say how i would have done the mix had i been head of the BP committee, but seeing more of the cards from the next few BPs would make that easier. I imagine changing just 5 or 6 slots would have done it. The skaven hero, the forge, the 3 HE cards, 1 of the DE triplicate slots (prob the event), the warpcannon and Marius are the slots id start looking at first.

And yes whether you buy 1 BP or multiples per player makes a big difference to how you feel when you see whats in the box. When you buy multiples you care about slots not totals. However I would hazzard a guess that the majority of customers / players (not those active on these boards) would probably buy just 1 set each or for their playgroup (like me). Given the triplicate contents it really is designed to be a single copy game with the option of multiple copies if you wanna do really competative deckbuilding. The move to all triplicate BPs confirms this for me. Currently our group of friends have agreed we will all share my cards to keep the arms race down and things on a theoretically even playing field when we do play. so yes my POV is very much from a "buy 1 BP now what does it give us?" perspective. But i appreciate there are many ways to buy, collect and play the game. thats where i was coming from anyway.

Dormouse, im a big fella and whilst your comments have seemed a little harsh at times your apology is not necessary but accepted graciously - i appreciate you are just more passionate and deeper into this game than I. This is a lively debate for us at least eh? I'll respect you in the morning too my friend. .

Now having said that... (FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!!!) I Iove that you think i warped the FFG copy (thats a 3 point pun). I thought mine was just a valid interpretation (as yours is) and i did put caveats in there.

ive argued mostly for better race balance and immediate playability of cards to give better choice, satisfaction and bang for buck each month. that just doesnt seem unreasonable to me. I appreciate that card quality mix across the whole game is not something i've analysed due mainly to having only played 4 games that night. but my point has always been primarily about the range of choice in each BP and anyway you cut it destro got WAY more choice outta that first BP. You are arguing that doesnt matter at all - not that it's not true. Some clearly feel that way and some clearly don't.

Of course i make assuptions about what will happen in the future (as do you in numerous posts) and I will eat my copious verbiage (and be very surprised) if there are not more skaven, and more splashable HE or more immediately playable neutral cards which could have been included in this first BP.

It really would be a shame if my whole argument was incoherent and at odds with itself. I thought id been pretty clear. this is it simply put again;

1. It is really the mix of cards in the BP NOT the quality of invidual cards themselves which I'm concerned about.
2. I wish there had been a more (not perfectly) equal range of choices in cards across the races - order got very little choice compared to destro.
3. Some of the cards would have been better included in later BPs when they will hopefully be more playable (eg Thanquol if not backed up by more first BP skaven, the forge, and the high cost HE cards for starters)

I feel the same as you about "story", it really is secondary to everything else going on.

Hi,

Well, I'm not agree that there is ANY problem with Thanquol, as it is one of the most feared units in our local metagame. It' ability to sit in the quest or kingdom zone and attack in th same turn for 4 damage ifyou have a single clan rat to support him is just strong and fast. And yes, he gets better with every BP.

I also plan to play Chitterning Horde as a 2 of with 2 Thanquol, 3 Clan rats an 2-3 Globadiers in my Chaos deck... but it need testing.

Marius a little bit undervalued card... he is a counter against Skaven builds and Warpstone excavation and a relaviveli strong unit even without his ability.

I have to agree that the HE cards are nearly useless with the current card pool, while the DE is highly usable. That's a valid point.

About the balance :

I think it shoud be measured by factions strenghts in the card pool, rather than card number in BP's. My thoughts, also counting some cards from the second BP :

- Empire gained a good unit (instant speed, and the first with 2 power) to support it if you want more firepower, and a useful control card if you go that way.

- Dwarves gained a cheap but heavy hitter unit, and a tactic which could be a real unit saver in most dwarf builds and helps to stop early rush tactics.

- Orcs gained Spider Raiders for early rush and Blood paint for decks working with bigger (therefore slower) units.

- Chaos gained a new sniper (sniping become a valid game tactic), and a cheap tactic card with many uses. It's the second BP which give them some very needed staying power, and more options for corrupting saving them from the "obvibiously the weakest faction" not so honorable title.

- Order also gets Marius, who is a 2/4 for 4, no loyalty, and with a thetamitacally fitting (skaven counter... but not overpowered) ability

- Skavens are getting a good base unit, and a "gaining strength from each other" subtheme with Thanquol. Warp Lightning Cannon is an interesting card, yet to find a deck to use in. (it is theoretically very usable with skavens who corrupt themselves, negating this +3 power booster drawback... and it's also usable to corrupt opponent units if needed !)

- Dark Elves get a good tactic whitch suprisingly work better with Chaos units (Valkia, Bloodsworn) than with DE, a good "survivor" unit and a strong hero.

- We get some near to useless High Elf cards... the hero is strong, but we don't have enought HE permanents to support it's loyalty cost. The HE tactic is useless without units, and the quest is nothing but a joke in the current card pool.

- The remaining neutrals are just ok... nothing suprising.

My assumption is :

While destruction have significally much more cards in the first BP than order it's don't effect the game balance in it's favor too much. Why ? Because those cards are for many different gaming styles, don't fit in the same deck. Also, I have to mention that in our last local "championship" the first two decks were order (a dwarf deck using Verena and some other Empire cards, and an Empire development deck)

I guess it just really boils down to I think a lot of your statements are just unfair.

If you are going to view the cards in a vacuum then it should be the actual ability and quality of the card/effect and not about what it does to your deck. Comparing apples to apples. If you are going to view the cards in relation to cards outside of the BP then it needs to be the entire metagame, and not your deck, in which case how does each card fill weakness or maximize strengths for the race as a whole.

If you are talking about how it affects your specific deck (or even those of your other players) then it isn't that the BP cards kinda of sucked (qualified but universal statement of quality) but the BP cards kinda sucked for you (qualified but personal statement of use). This may have been what you meant, but there is a distinct difference in I think my deck would have been better with cards X, Y, and Z being different cards, so I have no or little use for them, and these cards just suck and no one has any or only a little use for them.

I do not disagree on the numbers of cards that each side received, but one side receiving 10 new cards and another receiving 8, and true neutral getting 2 is not a big enough discrepancy to be worth mentioning to me.

As to the High Elf cards are not easily playable because of the expense... well that depends on ones view of how much they are worth spending on and whether or not you are just looking to splash or create an alliance. I've played against a Dwarf/High Elf alliance deck (and honestly anyone's reluctance to build a deck based purely on fluff can just it, you don't want to play cards the game allows you to, that is up to you, but that is not a valid place to argue the playability or inclusion of cards for anyone but you so has little relevance in a debate) and it gains enough resources and gets enough loyalty symbols in play as to not be a major problem in the mid-game to play Tyriel. The deck is a real pain to play against and works surprisingly well. So some people see the cards as having worth and are happy for their inclusion. Is there a more universally playable HE unit for Order decks that is coming out in a future BP? Probably. Would it have made more sense for it to come out first? Impossible to say until we see it.

But at this point I think it is obvious we are not going to agree, so I'm willing to just agree to disagree.

But

It's four power, because you could corrupt the Clan Rats to pump him.

Well, I believe that for card balance the developers should asume that the players could reach all available cards ever printed in unlimited numbers (at least 3 for each deck )

With 40 card BPs out there it could be foretolded that there will be people who would like to play multiples about the one ofs in the set. (it's a happy thing that the LCG model changes to 60 card BPs). But it's does not mean that if you want to play casually you have to buy multiple BP-s.

Also, I found that the numerically higher card pool for destruction makes draft variant more balanced... it's harder to draft all those corruption cards, and the many DE cards as a third supported race mean lesser integrity in your build. With one core set, in our games the destruction won 8:1 because it's much easier to draft ! (at least for us) I don't know if this "repair" was intentionally or not.

I still think that the only problem that the HE and DE factions don't get the same love... but it is started with the core set, not with Skavenblight. Basically : nearly no widely usable HE permanents mean less playability for those high loyalty cards, and there almost zero playability for Steel's Bane and the elf quest. I never heard about anybody (even locally, even here or in the BGG) playing those cards in a deck.

Yes, Tyrel is strong... but tell me how many decks could use for example Vaul's Unmaking, Blessing of Isha or Repair the Waystones for more than a minor (if any) use ? They are somewhat better in the draft variant to counter your opponent plan. And now I can't say 3 DE cards with the same limitations (Hate maybe)

And you could also compare the loyalty costs for playability :

DE : 6 cards with 1 loyalty, 3 with 2 loyalty, 1 with 3 loyalty (Malus Darkblade, their hero)

HE : 5 cards with 5 loyalty, 1 with 2 loyalty, and 4 with 3 loyalty

Also note that there are 5 nonhero units in DE while there are 2 in HE which aso telling if we talking about splashability.

ha yes silly me forgot about the skaven corrupt + 1 hammer power. that does make a difference.

well i think the game was clearly designed to be playable with just 1 copy of each product (with the option of getting more if you want to be competitive / constructionist) otherwise they would have done triplicates straight up. so an analysis of balance from that POV is as valid as one from a multicopy POV. obviously a source of contention so far and yes i think the developers are addressing the card balance aspect with the shift to triplicates. no one is gonna be unhappy about that right? - except it kinda makes it logical to buy 3 of all the current core and cycle product so you have 3 of everything in the game... sigh.

Yes I absolutely agree the HEs are indeed currently unloved as your stats show re loyalty costs and also with triplicates which is important to the 1 set buyers among us. Most people seem to agree on that. Its a big part of my problem with balance.

Dormouse Ive said before I dont have a "specific deck" i havent tuned stuff that much as there is little product i the pool. Im not really talking about card quality im talking about range of choices available to destro compared to order. As a 3 set of everything player I imagine it may be harder for you to appreciate this issue as it impacts on more casual 1 copy players. and thats fine

Marduk said:

You mention this several times and this is where I disagree. Let's say Tooth and Claw comes out tomorrow. There are 20 Order and 20 Destruction cards in the pack. The Order cards suck and the Destruction cards are stupid broken. You are OK with this because each player has an even number of choices? A bad choice is really no choice and I would rather have 3 very playable cards added to my arsenal than nine cards that will never leave my binder. Quality has to count for something.

naahh of course i would not be ok with that. I said many times I wasnt analysing quality. Of course quality counts but that wasnt the point of my analysis. For me I would hope both quality and balance in choices were reasonably evenly spread around the 4 races and across the order / destro divide. That would be the mark of a good BP!

I'll say it now there is no reasonable way to balance pack for quantity and quality without putting out BP that suck for everyone or are incredibly underwhelming.

BP are play tested with the Core Set in mind as well as with gradual and full release in mind. All play test situations as well as BP card se;ection is based on the concept that a player is going to choose which packs to buy and how many based on the cards that they wish to have. If you are buying a single BP and all your friends are sharing it to play then you are operating in a vastly different scenario than is being tested and catered towards. The game is playable with x1 of everything shared by a group of people but there is no real way to be able to balance card quality and quantity for this with the old distribution model without completely sacrificing meta balance for the competitive or completionist player.

If you aren't examining card quality then this is a pointless discussion. In order for a pack to be balanced the quality of a card is off set by its quantity, as well as the overall quality and quantity to that race (each card in the BP with that loyalty symbol, as well as to a lesser degree the aligned forces). If you are trying to reduce this down to simple numbers of who got more, I retract all statements, and bow out of this conversation because I just have no interest what so ever in that debate because I can't see that being a relevant metric in this circumstance. If this were a game of checkers having more pieces would mean something, but it isn't and in my mind it doesn't. It is far more akin to Chess where the power of the piece determines it worth. Your dwarven player is complaining about getting an extra rook, 2 bishops, and a queen compared to someone who got a knight and 5 pawns. That is a nonsensical argument to me.

We can refer to quality in his argument, but his primary conclusive issues with the battle pack and why it "KINDA sucks" are a few things.

First: Imbalance between Order and Destro: Destro DID get more options than Order, given that they have access to the Nuetrals, the Skaven, and the DEs are very nearly splashable, if you're desperate. Order got just some of the Nuetrals, and their HEs are not.

Second: SOME of the power analysis: Here is where quality comes in, but it was a secondary issue for the OP, I believe, as he was mostly concern about USEABLE cards (which, is later discussed, has some bearing to the issue of playability/providing one GOOD options).

The concluding solution was something along the lines of going easy on the DEs (removing one of their triplicates and providing HEs a lower loyalty cost triplicate). Perhaps also the addition of some more Order specific Nuetrals. Perhaps a Skaven hero that was more splashable in other decks than just a skaven one (as, you would not put that hero in a deck by itself with no other skaven support, and at the time of SB BP's release it was not incredibly fluid for one to include all the Skaven options in a Destro deck).

New topic please?

I would totally put that hero in a deck with no other Skaven. Any card my opponent has to keep track of because of a sneaky ability is a card deserving consideration. With a support or tactic to power him up instead of other Skaven he becomes even more of a PIA.

I still don't think quality is something he is really examining in detail. It seems he stops at how easy it is to play the card not what the card does for that cost. This is the same mindset that had people early on saying they never play with hero's or bloodthirster because they were to expensive and then finding out that those cards are worth the investment depending on how one plays and builds decks. It is also were the opinion that Quests are not worth a deck slot and not played with seems to come from... yet I've seen long time players use and abuse quests... especially against people without them in their deck.

Everyone evaluates cards differently, I'm not saying that anyone must conform to my method of doing it, but to create a thread universally declaring this BP as "kind of sucking" without looking at it from every angle just seems... i don't know, wrong. Especially the undertone the first post was done in as if this was all the fault of FFG for letting it's successful business model get in the way of the gamer. That was were this post started to feel a bit trollish to me.

I just got my first two BP's (1x each) and I can easily say they compliment each of the 4 races nicely. I admit there's HE-DE disbalance, but keep in mind these are packs that go out each month - so even if a faction is slightly overpowered, that's for a month or two. You may also look at this from a flavour point of view - it's like shifting balance in a large scale battle! I'm sure if you wait a month or two you'll get a few BP's that compensate for HE and for order unit numbers in the first two. After all you can always skip a BP if it doesn't have anything you want... and even if you get them all it's still a really modest investment compared to CCG's.

Not every card is going to be useful all the time. I'd prefer to see a few dormant cards in each set that create a stir a few months down the line rather than a constant cycling of decks to fit in as many new cards as possible because they are strictly better than previous releases. Even if you don't like anything your get from a release it's only a one-month wait for the next set.

vermillian said:

Girathon said:

You just love saying aggro, don't you ?