I feel like I'm still gaining a deeper understanding of this game and have a lot more to learn. But one thing that's been apparent for a while is the huge range of card power. It's very reminiscent of the early days of Magic, where the power level of cards in the original set varied from Black Lotus to Thoughtlace. I seem to recall Mark Rosewater writing about an easy way to tell if a card is undercosted in one of his innumerable articles on Magic design: if you remove desirable attributes from the card, would you still play it? Or for overcosted, vice versa?

Here's an example of a card that I consider overpowered:

Clan Moulder's Elite
Neutral 2
Unit: 2/5
PP
Skaven. Destruction only. Battlefield only. Cannot defend.

Ok, so this is clearly great in a Skaven deck. But it's also amazing in any Destruction deck that's not planning to block, i.e. any rush deck. Let's look at it from the perspective of a Skaven deck.

Do you play it at 2/4? Yes, and you're very excited about it. Almost all your other Skaven have very low HP.
How about 2/3? Yes. You're still very happy.
2/2? Ok. Now we're quite so excited. Still definitely playable. Doesn't die to a Vile Sorceress like a bunch of your other Skaven.
2/1? Well. 2 hammers for 2 is still a great deal and only seen on a couple of other cards. You'd play it, but you don't windmill the thing onto the table.

So you can hit this guy with a nerfbat 4 times and he is still playable. This is no Black Lotus, but it's gratuitously undercosted. Clearly the Elite has a strong drawback but that's easily negated by playing decks that don't care about actually defending.

Now for the other end of the spectrum:

Repair the Waystones
High Elf Quest 0 EEE
Quest. Action: Discard 3 resource tokens from this card to target a support card in your discard pile, and put it into play in your quest zone.
Quest. Forced: Place 1 resource token on this card at the beginning of your turn if a unit is questing here.

Okaaaay. So how did the support card in your discard get there? This really needs some other effect to make it playable at any cost. No, Infiltrate isn't going to do it, it's too slow. While Quests are a bit problematic from a game balance point of view since the quest itself is indestructible, consider this alternative card:

Repair the Waystones
High Elf Quest 0E
Quest. Action: Discard 1 resource token from this card to target a support card in your discard pile, and put it into play in your quest zone.
Quest. Forced: Place 1 resource token on this card at the beginning of your turn.

Even if you remove the actual need to have a unit go on the quest and have it trigger every single turn and lower the cost to 0E and have it still be indestructible, I don't think it would see play right now. That's a huge gap from the printed card and it's still weak.

I think that this will get better as the game matures - and it's ok to have a few terrible cards anyway. But I do hope that the power level of the cards smoothes out a bit.

Actually, the way High Elves are right now with such high loyalty costs, if you could play that quest for so cheap and get a loyalty icon out of it, it would be great just for that. I think in general though, quests are weak. They have a decent restriction in how they are played in that you cant just move a unit in the quest zone onto it, and they typically make you sacrifice the unit questing. Quests need to be more powerful to have decent playability. A quest that gave you a resource for each counter removed would be ok if it was cheap enough to play.

I take it, then, that you have not yet read Deathmaster Sniktch. I think it's safe to say that he makes the precise extent of the Clan Moulder Elite's hiney less than essential to Skaven's battle plan.

Well, I wrote this last night before I saw the spoiler, but... he's pretty much the same deal as the Elite where you could batter him for quite a while with a nerfbat before he'd miss the cut for a Skaven deck. Just another example of what I'm talking about. In the Skaven Chaos or Orc decks you may run the Deathmaster even if he was 0/1. You'd think about it more before you played him, admittedly. At 2 hammers he is a no-brainer - I'm not sure what they were thinking.

Has to be said, the Skaven heroes are pretty **** heroic. The Greyseer is a S.O.B. too.

And as for the "play the HE quest for the loyalty even if it has no effect", that's a sad verdict on the rest of your cardpool. I am not sure why all the HE stuff has so much loyalty - it's like they have the "Homelands tax" of WH:I where they all have a random extra loyalty or two on top of the "actual cost". Is it a theme thing?

And yet somehow when you put both Elite and Snickty Snickty side by side and say, "I can use both of these?" a little bit of pee squirts out and I have to take some Ritalin to reign myself back in.

Honestly, who didn't open those packs and immediately try out that Hero Skaven? I can't freakin' wait.

Actually, when I initially read the text for the Deathmaster, I misread it as him being able to kill 1 hp units all by his lonesome. The fact that he needs other Skaven to do it moves him from 3-of-in-every-destro-deck to play-in-every-skaven deck, but he's still undercosted/overpowered (whichever way you want to measure it) by a whole crapload.

My current watchlist of cards which fell over the top of the power curve:

Innovation

This card was a mistake IMNSHO. It's a 3-of in virtually every deck (some rush decks never develop unless forced to) and as a bonus there's only 1 of them in the Core Set. If it capped out at 2 resources it would still be too good, once again failing the nerfbat test. Should probably cost 2 and therefore reward the City Gates / Awake the Mountain type decks.

Contested Village

Yeah, you can disagree but you're wrong. If you don't have 3 of these in every deck you are doing it wrong. I do not think there should be any cards at that power level. Black Lotus is the same way in Magic, where it just makes every deck better no matter what the deck was doing.

Judgement of Verena

This card is a huge blowout and makes for a lot of wins through lucky draws almost regardless of what's in the rest of the deck. I'd rather have other powerful tactics in Empire (kinda like Chaos, actually) than having a massive sledgehammer hanging in the toolshed next to kiddie toys. The fact that it's so good that Empire is willing to play Will of the Electors (even though that would normally be terrible) should be a telltale signal.

Shrine to Nurgle was previously in this exalted list but after the errata it's merely ok - not great and by no means a must-run in Chaos.

Other cards which I think pretty much skipped the "development" step in "design, develop, print" but aren't seriously problematic (yet) for the game:

• Spider Riders - I think this was too strong - but the Orcs do need some tools like this to do their thing.
• Clan Moulder's Elite - fails nerfbat test (repeatedly).
• Greyseer Thanquil - fails nerfbat test but at least only has 1 hp so is pretty killable
• Deathmaster Sniktch - fails nerfbat test (repeatedly).
• Shrine to Taal - maybe. Maybe. The fact that it takes a turn to do anything may make it non-broken. Again, fails the nerfbat test as you'd be fine with it if it capped out at say 2 hammers.
• Lobber Crew - I do not think I have played a Destruction deck yet that didn't end up with 3. Probably should have been 2 Orc loyalty.

Dwarves right now seem bad, verging on terrible - they are more of a running joke in our playgroup than a race. Order's cardpool is generally poor compared with Destruction right now - there are an awful lot more options when building Chaos or Orc decks than Empire, for example.

Lobber Crew was the only card that I would have considered "watchlist" worthy prior to Deathmaster's Dance, and then they basically give us a steroid-bolstered Lobber Crew that you corrupt instead of sacrifice. So, I'm thinking FFG's watchlist is at zero.

You have certainly picked some powerful cards, but here's my reasoning for why they don't quite make my hypothetical watchlist:

Innovation - This card is deceptive. It's good in some decks, and you always want three if you want one, but look at it this way: if you develop three cards and then play an Innovation, you've just traded four cards for three barrels. I know another way to do this. It's called playing a guy to your Kingdom instead of your Quest. You see a barrel advantage when you draw more than one Innovation, but you are limiting yourself to developing just one zone (which will likely be ignored by your opponent) and should proably get some utility out of that. I will admit that the ability to generate "surprise" barrels on your opponent's turn is very strong, and that decks which get free developments get a lot of mileage out of Innovation. Still, I rarely find a place for it in Destruction decks, where I often want to spread developments around for the purposes of Rip Dere 'eads Off.

Contested Village - I agree there should be three in every deck. I think the real problem is that other Limited cards more or less suck; once we get some decent ones Errant Wolf isn't too shabby you *might* think about displacing this. Still, it's not like the card shapes the game, and it isn't a card you're always happy to see like Savage Marauders. As good as it is early, it's a dead draw late in the game. And, in my experience, it almost always goes to Quest because so many other supports have to go to Kingdom, and you don't want to have your card-draw totally shut off by removal. This makes it essentially a Huntsmen that's harder to kill, but has no faction icon, no ability to attack/defend, and no ability to die to a Lobber Crew to save a fatty.

Judgment of Verena - I think they probably tested this card more than any other tactic. Everything in core set Empire is so obviously constructed around it. I think they will keep trying to push the Countersrike and high-HP weenie themes until you are eventually forced to choose between a Verena deck and defensive combat deck. Verena certainly warps the game by emphasizing development distribution, which otherwise doesn't matter at all. I still think it's an OK card for the game.

Shrine to Taal - This absolutely needs a big upside because it gives you NO guaranteed hammers. Very vulnerable to disruption.

Re: Deathmaster - He would certainly be even more broken if he needed Skaven = HP instead of > HP. I agree you can't really play him outside of Skaven. However, I think Destruction is now more or less limited to playing Skaven or anti-Skaven, and Skaven is decent as anti-Skaven. Troll Vomit + Supports + Fatties is pretty much the only other option I see. Or maybe indirect damage instead of fatties.

Re: Dwarves - I don't think Dwarves are all that bad. They have pretty much the only way to survive the Deathmaster onslaught that doesn't involve removal since they can play Supports + fatties + Stand Your Ground. And they were competitive before with Zhufbar/Ranger/Stand tricks and MR of Valaya. They can also potentially beat Deathmaster *with* removal. I think my list is going to start out:

3x Zealot Hunter
3x Zhufbar Engineer
3x Abandoned Mine
3x Pilgrimage
3x Reclaim the Hold
...

it will be a pile, but it will not lose its whole board to the Deathmaster!

cyberfunk said:

Innovation - This card is deceptive. It's good in some decks, and you always want three if you want one, but look at it this way: if you develop three cards and then play an Innovation, you've just traded four cards for three barrels. I know another way to do this. It's called playing a guy to your Kingdom instead of your Quest. You see a barrel advantage when you draw more than one Innovation, but you are limiting yourself to developing just one zone (which will likely be ignored by your opponent) and should proably get some utility out of that. I will admit that the ability to generate "surprise" barrels on your opponent's turn is very strong, and that decks which get free developments get a lot of mileage out of Innovation. Still, I rarely find a place for it in Destruction decks, where I often want to spread developments around for the purposes of Rip Dere 'eads Off.

There is a big difference between "this turn" and "next turn". That is why in Magic, Mox Pearl > Plains - functionally, they pretty much do the same thing, but I can play the Mox a turn earlier. Acceleration is very strong, especially when cards are so "cheap". You do not need a ton of developments in your Kingdom for Innovation to be good - even if Innovation capped at 2 I would still run it in every deck I have right now.

And as for Verena, the "everything is constructed around it" thing is exactly the issue I have with it. Games against Empire often seem to boil down to whether they draw Will/Verena early enough regardless of the rest of the deck.

I have not found a Dwarf deck that can beat any reasonable rush draw. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I just don't see it. The big issue is that the rush decks are fast enough to burn the second zone on turn 4 - a simple Seduce on a fatty you drop to defend zone 2 and you lose. You don't have any reset buttons you can play quickly enough like Pestilence or Judgement with a Dwarf capital, so you get buried under cheap, efficient units like Spider Riders, Clan Moulders Elite, Veteran Sellswords and so on. Right now, near-mono Orc, Orc+Skaven and Chaos+Skaven seem like the "best" rush decks.

Believe it or not, I think the Lobber Crew is actually stronger than the Deathmaster simply because you can play it turn 1. Turn 1 Lobber Crew, Spider Riders, Warpstone to Quest is a backbreaking tempo play - and those kind of hands come up an awful lot in the Orc decks. With the Deathmaster, while he's extremely strong, he needs at least one other Skaven standing next to him to work his evil magic and he's not coming out till turn 2 against another Destruction deck (Innovating into 4-cost units is usually bad because of the risk of them dropping a Lobber Crew).

Clamatius said:

I lose at /quoting.

I figure that FFG are trying to push people to kill the Deathmaster. I'm going to predict "mission accomplished" on that score.

Which kinda sucks for decks that normally can't (I'm looking at you, Order) - although I guess they can run 3x witchhunter and hope. Again, it's a bit like Magic a long time ago where decks that had no answer to 1st turn Hypnotic Specter were bad by default.

Chittering Horde (Neutral Tactic) 1

Skaven. Destruction Only.

Action: Search the top 5 cards of your deck. You may reveal any number of Skaven cards found and put them into your hand. Shuffle therest of the searched cards into your deck.

Surprised no one mentioned Chittering Horde as a potential problem. This card gets better and better with each battlepack, and notice that it has the Skaven keyword for extra recursion. Given the large number of efficient Skaven cards, Chittering Horde can be depended on to generate a 1-2 card advantage for 1 barrel. With some luck it can generate 3+ card advantage, especially if you find another Horde in the search. This one definitely deserves a place on the watch list.

While we are a looking for overpowered card like clan mulder elite, Don't forget Warpstone excavation

This game equals the setting for each faction. It is therefore not necessary to match cards. Verena and the shrine of taal are good ... but what option has the empire without them? None.

Contested village, innovation and other neutral cards... are neutral cards for both factions. If you think that are overpowered cards, put 3 in your deck.

Black Lotus is an artifact and can be used by any Magic deck in formats where it is allowed. That does not mean that it is good for the game.

And yeah, Warpstone Excavation is an obvious omission. While it's drawback is significant, again it's negated by running it in decks where you don't care about blocking - 2 first turn WE in quest for rush is a huge swing.

The Skaven are definitely overpowered but I think there's a reason behind it. After the end of the corruption cycle, FFG will release another faction (probably related to Order) that might help counter act the Skaven cards. After the end of the next cycle, things will be more balanced.
This is just a guess, I have no inside information on this.

Vamosamorir said:

Warpstone excavation is overpowered for any deck, and that's why every deck has it.

it does not mean we have the same chances to win. the player who will draw them at the beginning will have an insane advantage. so the difference is often luck-based.

i just want this card to be banned so that every deck can have an equivalent development, and games would be much more interesting.

please FFG, make that change quickly.

I haven't put a Warpstone in any Empire deck after the first one I built. If you go Thyrus instead of Johannes and have a few Sigmar's Intervention, it's a decent card in Empire. But all the lists I see are Pistoliers/Johonnes/Shrine. I often leave it out of Dwarf decks as well.

i Actually think warpstone meteor deserves a metion here, 3 of those babies in a deck is devastating, i use them to great efect when combined with nurgles pestilence and other corruption cards

I agree that WE doesn't fit well on Jumping Jacks deck.
Warpstone Excavation is a powerful card but I don't think it should be banned. It has its drawbacks. I've seen Chaos/Skaven decks loose games because of it, unable to defend zones in crucial moments of the game.

I think the closest equivalent to Warpstone Excavation in Magic is Mana Crypt, which is similarly a powerful card with a large drawback. 0-costed cards that provide hammers or barrels directly (like WE or Innovation) are probably a mistake in the long run for the game since they speed up the early turns too much.

The point where Skaven are blocking is the point where they already lost and you didn't notice. That's why WE is good - you ignore the drawback if you accept that you pretty much aren't going to block.

WE in a skaven deck is awesome when you have rat ogres out, coupled with snick it's a deadly combo

Clamatius said:

Mister Mask said:

My orders decks hasn't it.

I think that would be enough if Warpstonse was Limited; like contested village. Thisway you can put in play only one per turn

If I'm going to be honest, the game the way you would have it, sounds... boring. A lot of vanilla units with slight gradation in power level. When we see decks full of "power" cards winning against all comers I'll agree with you, but that isn't happening in the games I've played, nor in the various meta-reports I've read. The decks dominating the field tend to be a mix of fodder and bruisers, of staples and bombs.

Another thing to consider is that the LCG must appeal to both the casual as well as the tournament player, and because there is no collect-ability to speak of in the game everyone has access to the same cards in whatever amounts they chose, which vastly alters the meaning of "power" cards, because a superior deck is not based on how many ultra-rares, going for $50-$100 a pop, you have but instead ones that exert their will on their opponents and provide enough answers or disruptive cards to maintain tempo control.