You're undervaluing board presence & card advantage dude. The strength of warpstone is as means to get card advantage (or resource advantage which you will turn into card advantage), same as innovation. Card advantage wins games. Deathmaster is a very powerful soft-lock card, demanding an answer the moment he hits the table (and often a +cards/+tempo play even when they kill him immediately), but he is not even close to as format-defining as Warpstone, Innovation, and (to a lesser extent) Contested Village.

Put it this way. If the gold standard for resource gen & card draw was alliances (which are IMO undercosted at 2... should be 2 cost for a single faction loyalty symbol, not two, but whatever...), you'd see entirely different decks being viable. If we couldnt reliably get 4 cost "worth" of stuff onto the board turn 1, the entire format slows down by a turn. That's HUGE. Deathmaster is just a powerful strategy. The "core 9" are responsible for the tempo of the entire game.

Anyway, as far as the three cards you designed, if I had a hand where my turn 1 was "prognosticator, go" or "barracks, go", I almost certainly mulligan. Cannon Fodder is a very interesting design (kudos), but probably only borderline playable is my initial guess... he is what 1-cost hammers should look like though, IE a serious drawback. But regardless, none of these is anywhere close to the power level of Contested Village, let alone Innovation or Warpstone.

f7eleven said:

Thanks for the kind words about Noah. Hopefully it all works out in the end and his transplant will be successful.

ddm5182 said:

This is reaching, and you're starting to embellish your argument.

The card does have a drawback, the problem is that the drawback doesn't really matter, right? That's why it's an auto-include.
If it's powerful and not an auto-include, we don't need to ban it right?

As opposed to a narrow tactic, or a 4 cost card, why can't the hate be a utility card that punishes corruption? I submitted a card to your contest that dealt a single damage to a character as it corrupted.

This card would ensure that if a WE was in play, you couldn't also buff the corresponding zone with 1 cost characters. Every 1 cost with a power that I can think of has 1 HP, as well as many utility 2 cost characters. (I did make it Order only, so that Chaos decks couldn't abuse it :/) It was a Unique Neutral 3 cost, 2 power support. I think I would stop playing WE in certain decks if this card existed, even if it was just playable in Order.

What a about a support that stopped the enemy from uncurrupting units? Wouldnt exactly make warpstone excavation a bad card, but from there the guy with WE would have to consider cards that can play off of that effect, like the cards that deal extra damage to currupted units and other cards.

The problem with hate cards for something like warpstone is that they need to either be *extremely* powerful, or they just don't have any teeth. Its the same reason you happily play Skaven decks with Zealot Hunter in the format. ZH is a powerful 2-for-1, no doubt, but the advantage you gain from having a Deathmaster or Greyseer in play for even one turn can be backbreaking... and the times when they dont have the answer in hand immediately they just lose. So even if you printed cards like the ones the two of you are describing (and note that I already covered a card that doesnt allow enemy units to be uncorrupted, it was one of the first I suggested), the point is that you gain so much of an advantage by playing warpstone and having it unopposed for even a few turns that, by the time the hate card is drawn, it won't do enough to offset the gains.

Unless the hate card not only destroys the warpstone but also undoes the advantage of having had it in play (for free!) for 1-3+ turns, it will simply not be good enough to stop the card being played.

And anyway, I don't really want the game to turn into a series of overpowered, overly narrow hate cards as band-aids for their design mistakes, when a ban and a commitment not to print cheap resource acceleration fixes the problem much more simply & elegantly.

ddm5182 said:

How would you describe the matchup between a Skaven deck with Deathmasters and no Innovation and a Skaven deck with Innovations and no Deathmasters? I'm guessing that would be about 70/30ish. I realize that acceleration is important, and can benefit strategy, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's responsible for shaping the format. If there were a card that said "win the game" and cost 5-CCC, you would still need to draw it and rack up five barrels, so you would still be playing the "core nine," but I don't think you could really argue that fixing the card/barrel curve would be the first order of business for a ban list if such a card existed. Acceleration is interesting design space, as long as all available acceleration has relevant drawbacks (e.g. WE's corruption effect matters to Order decks, Innovation's card disadvantage matters to rush decks). I think we're actually pretty close to that scenario, just not quite there.

ddm5182 said:

I agree that Prognosticator, go/Barracks, go would be mulligan situations. Barracks, Huntsmen, go I might be able to live with (especially against Orcs). The Prognosticator is probably a little underpowered considering Limited is supposed to matter. Maybe give him an extra HP and have him net you a card (draw 3, chuck 2).

I think Cannon Fodder would probably see some play, though an early Clan Moulder makes it look kind of silly. Good when you go first, since you'd be forcing them to the BF early; good when you have a Lobber Crew (or they have a Lobber Crew). And, unlike Village, it would give you a Loyalty, an HP, and the ability to go to BF late in the game. I agree Village is probably still better, but CF is in the ballpark.

At any rate, the point was that with enough solid Limited options out there, you should be able to force people to a) not play Contested Village or b) risk having unplayable cards in their hand. If they aren't going to commit to printing Limited cards at costs 1-3, then I agree that they should scrap Contested Village. That said, they did kind of seem to plan on its availability when dolling out possible openings to some factions. You don't want the game to turn into "let's see who can draw their 3-cost/2-hammer guy."

Your reasoning is flawed in the skaven w/ no deathmasters vs. skaven w/ deathmasters matchup. A better example would be skaven w/ no innovation vs. dwarves w/ innovation - the point being, deathmaster is just a strategy, not a defining element of the game. Decks that run innovation (& warpstone, & cv) are operating on a different plane than decks not running them, w/rt their ability to leave stage 1.

That's what innovation/warpstone/cv allow - rapid progress to the midgame, or even lategame in the case of some truly busted draws. They compress the available maneuvering room for aggro and midrange decks, and force what would naturally be 'stage 3' decks to be able to survive an aggressive midrange deck masquerading as an aggro deck due to resource acceleration. That's why everything in W:I looks like a rush deck right now. In truth, Orc/Skaven is NOT an aggro deck, at all... it is a midrange Rock deck that looks and behaves like an aggro deck because the format is so incredibly fast in terms of resource accel. That deck (and most other brands of "rush" in the current meta) would play out substantially differently, and have weaknesses that could be exploited by strategies committed to early pressure, without the core 9. As is, midrange is flat out better at getting out powerful guys while still rocking a full suite of disruption (whether orcs' lobber crews/pillages or dwarves tricks) because there is no room for sligh-style aggro to punish those decks for setting up their midgame plan. And in turn, there are no true control 'stage 3' decks because the midrange decks are so fast and punishing that those decks simply cannot reliably survive into stage 3 to setup their gameplan.

If we had to rely on armories, cemetaries and alliances for resources and card draw, the space for deckbuilding would grow immensely. Without Deathmaster, we'd just be playing Ugrok as our finisher in orc decks and probably bump up Troll Vomit to a 3-of.

ddm5182 said:

I guess if you were being scientific about measuring DM against Innovation, you would have to take Skaven w/o Innovation against the field and then Skaven w/o Deathmaster against the field and see which fared better. I still don't think there's much question that DM would prove much more important. Admittedly, this only tells you how good Innovation is in relation to Deathmaster in Skaven decks, but that's useful information. If Innovation is only the 35th-37th-best card in Skaven, then it will probably work its way out of the deck over time. Deathmaster is obviously never going to leave Skaven decks, but also cannot ever enter any other decks, so he's more or less a fixture. I think he does bad things to the meta, but admittedly he can only do them in proportion to the number of Skaven decks in the meta.

I certainly agree that banning Warpstone, Village, and Innovation would change the meta. I think that banning the Deathmaster would also change the format considerably (less than banning all three of those cards, but more than banning any single one). If the game were "finished" today and we had to set the cardpool for all of eternity without adding any cards, I'd ban at least the Deathmaster, the Bolt Thrower, and the Lobber Crew. WE would be next on the list, but I'd have to see how the game played without Deathmasters and Crews first. I would consider banning the Village or Innovation, but probably not both (I think you need a little variety in possible openings). But, the game is still changing via additions to the cardpool.

Would you agree that Warpstone Excavation's corruption effect would be reason not to play it in some decks if the environment were somewhat slower?

Do you think Innovation is a must-play for every deck in an environment where all factions have access to multiple 3-cost/2-hammer guys as HE does now?

Would you agree that we could, theoretically, design Limited cards good enough to displace Contested Village?

What would you think about changing the Limited rule? Say that if a Limited card was played to a zone, that zone couldn't get any more cards that turn (and, obviously, Limited cards couldn't be played to a zone that had already gotten a card). That seems like it would make Village less attractive and make Limited at least theoretically relevant on higher-cost cards. Not saying that will happen, either, but it seems like fixing a busted keyword is preferable to banning a card everybody's got nine of floating around.

I dont think banning Deathmaster would change the meta at all. All of the same decks, with virtually all of the same cards, would still be played. Order would get slightly stronger on average, especially Empire or High Elves, but lets be honest - Dwarves doesnt need the help (and Empire and HE would still be terribad). Like I said, you'd just see Orc/Skaven run Ugrok as a 1-2-of and 3x Troll Vomit, that's about all.

Lobber Crew is not a card that should be considered for banning. Its a fine card, on the high side of the power curve (I'd still play it as a 2-cost tactic), and definitely able to give you some tempo and card advantage in the early turns of the game, but it is not broken by any means (no moreso than Zealot Hunter anyway). If I had to redesign it I'd make it restricted to only using its ability on the opponent's turn (to avoid the "get my resources, crew you on turn 2" shenanigans).

As to your specific questions:

• Q: Would you agree that Warpstone Excavation's corruption effect would be reason not to play it in some decks if the environment were somewhat slower?
• A: Absolutely not. WE is insane. No matter how slow the format is, you always play it as a 3-of, always. Card advantage is vastly better than defending. If you know you will need to defend a zone at some point during the game (and you should know this if you are paying attention) you can find a way to do so even w/ a WE in play. And knowing where to play it (even on turn 1) should shape your gameplan for the rest of the game. Essentially, if you need to defend a zone with a WE in it you probbaly were losing regardless.

• Q: Do you think Innovation is a must-play for every deck in an environment where all factions have access to multiple 3-cost/2-hammer guys as HE does now?
• A: YES YES YES YES MY GOD MAN. 3-cost guys w/ 2 hammers are called one thing: A BLOWOUT. They are TERRIBLE. Lobber Crew, Village, go... sound familiar? Clan Rat, WNYB, want to scoop now or do you just enjoy getting timewalked? You do not want to use units for your hammer generation in a meta that is this hostile to units. Just, no. Even if they printed completely broken alliances that cost 3 and gave 2 hammers & a faction symbol for every faction I would still run Innovation as a 3-of, because then I could do horrifically busted things like one of those + develop + innovate into spider riders or contested village. Cheap resources are ridiculously good.

• Q: Would you agree that we could, theoretically, design Limited cards good enough to displace Contested Village?
• A: Theoretically if every card in my deck was Limited I wouldnt play Contested Village. So I guess that suggests it would be possible to have enough of my resource base be limited that I wouldnt play CV, but realize that would only be the case if the rest of my resource base produced enough board presence quickly enough to be better than CV is now. Which is basically saying, "if they made the resource accel problem twice as bad, would you still think the issues created by the core 9 today are bad?"... to which I respond, "yes... just less bad than your theoretical uber-resource-accel world". Make sense?

• Q: What would you think about changing the Limited rule?
• A: I don't think the limited rule needs to be changed, I think its fine as is. Several cards should be limited though, to make building a resource base harder. Mining Tunnels should be. Alliances DEFINITELY should be. Wouldnt mind seeing it on cheap units (envoy, huntsman) too.

I absolutely don't agree about the Alliances or making resource building even harder. I'd prefer NOT to play Magic: The Sucking, thank you very much.

I also don't think that WE is as bad as you seem to think it is though I do think it is the main issue with the Rush decks. Unfortunately I don't see any real solution no matter what's done.

This thread is as good as the Simpsons.......20 years running and still makes me laugh out loud! Good on ya, mates! Here's to another 20!

ddm5182 said:

I think that the range of possible list for Destruction would change quite a bit if you were only auto-including three Skaven instead of nine to twelve. Dedicated Skaven from an Orc board might look pretty much the same, but Chaos and DE would have some possibilities open up, I think. In any case, the major difference would be (for a DM ban or WE ban) would be in the way games played out and the relative power of deck types.

ddm5182 said:

I agree that limiting it to opponent's turn would fix the card.

ddm5182 said:

I guess I should've been more specific. There are a lot of reasons why defending is bad right now. How many of them would need to be removed in order to make corrupting your own guys a relevant effect? Or is defending somehow an intrinsically and irredeemably bad mechanic? Explain.

ddm5182 said:

Obviously, the 3/2 start is vulnerable to removal and it wouldn't be my plan A against Orcs or DE. Even if you have to float it out there, it's not always disastrous. If they counter your 3/2 with Clan Rat/WNYB via Innovation, they are up a hammer and down three cards, where you are down one card. It's worse if they go first, but then most removal shenanigans are.

In your support scenario, you are burning three cards to put a Village on the table turn one. That means it doesn't even grant any card advantage until the fifth turn of the game. You spend two turns playing at a card disadvantage and by putting Innovation in the deck you risk drawing it later in the game when it is less useful. How is that busted?

ddm5182 said:

Making Alliances Limited makes all the sense in the world. I can respect the opinion that Limited is a stupid, Magic-derivative mechanic, but once you've got it, you have to run with it.

RE: removing DM from the format - the problem is, DE and Chaos arent losing to Deathmaster. They are losing to Riders/Moulder's Elite/Pillage/Lobber Crew. DM beats order, destruction decks have plenty of outs to him. Rather than devolve into a long discussion on a hypothetical deathmaster-less format, I'd basically sum up my pov on it like so: dwarves are even more ridiculous, orc/skaven is still the best rock deck, empire and high elves are slightly more viable than they were before but hardly competitive, and thrower still chokes the format. It gets easier for dwarves to splash High Elf's Disdain though without DM to pressure them, so Disdain Dwarves probably becomes the best deck (I'd need to test quite a bit more to say that with confidence though).

RE: blocking - If warpstone said on it "you cannot ever block in this zone, ever" it would still be an incredible automatic 3-of in every deck. That's not commentary on blocking being bad as much as it is card/board advantage being insane. You just execute your gameplan around conceding the loss of whatever zone you play warpstone in. That's frequently how you play anyway.

RE: innovation - I think you're missing a lot of why the card is so good. Cards on board are just so much better than cards in hand because they represent compounding card advantage throughout the game. If the opponent goes "Spearmen, go" and I go "develop, innovate, clan rats to K, lobber crew, use crew", on the next turn I can play a pair of 2-cost supports or guys to quest and now I am in the mid-game (drawing 3+/turn, using 4+resources/turn) while you are a full turn behind me. How will you catch up when I a pair of 2-drops every turn, especially when my 2-drops in the orc deck are so efficient? You are just not going to beat another lobber crew, a pllage or two, or a couple of moulder's elites, unless you can get to the midgame as fast as I do, preferably faster.

Also, don't underestimate the usefulness of leveraging multiple innovations in the late game to recover from a board reset, whether your own Troll Vomit or your opponent's Flames of the Phoenix. Innovation is almost never a dead card, unless you've basically already lost and need to rip the miser's Troll Vomit or Deathmaster or something, but that's not really a good way to evaluate card quality.

RE: Limited mechanic, I don't really get why its magic derivative, the design space is far broader than that. Its clearly being used now to limit the pace of resource/card engine development (which it isnt doing very well is it!), so I guess its sort of similar to MTG's land mechanics, but there's no reason you couldnt have a tactic w/ Limited, etc.

ddm5182 said:

I was meaning that Chaos and DE would, themselves, have to diversify because they couldn't just fall back on running CM Elite/Deathmaster/Greyseer/Clan Rats.

I think Empire at least would get a pretty substantial boost without the Deathmaster around. Certainly more than they would get out of seeing the Warpstone out of the format, though that would help them some as well.

ddm5182 said:

That is frequently how I play, yes. I'm just saying that if the game changed, I might have to play differently. Admittedly, stuff like Protect the Empire doesn't seem to be taking the game in a direction that will make Warpstones worse...

ddm5182 said:

I'm not missing this card. I play it a lot; really. I'm not at all arguing that it doesn't turn lots of bad hands into good hands for decks with lots of 2s (like Skaven). I'm just saying that it isn't always as good as it seems. Decks that aren't structured around 2-drops have much less to gain from it on turn one. Burning three cards on turn one to get a Village in Quest is decent sometimes, bad sometimes, but usually a wash. It will probably mean you see one to three more cards over the course of the game, but also that you are limiting your options early in the game.

Funny, that Lobber Crew keeps coming up. Maybe somebody ought to take a look at that card.

I think it is an issue with how easy it is to kill one's opponent. Independent of what cards are released, the core rules of the game favor aggressive play and I feel that these rules may be 'broken'. Basically, it is because you must defend 3 targets while only needing to kill 2.

False, you actually only need to defend 2. I'll give you a minute to think about why...

@cyberfunk - Not denying that a deck of all 3 drops is not going to value Innovation particularly highly. But, I'd argue that such a deck could be easily improved by moving its resource base down the curve (to operate in phase 2 on 4 resources/turn rather than 6/turn). However in all fairness this is due to the way the current cardpool looks, and if they started printing a bunch of Temple of Vaul-esque resource generators I admit that Innovation could theoretically become more of a tool and less of a staple. We're a long ways off of that given the current meta though.

ddm5182 said:

lol.

I never said it was never okay to ban a card. Just that your reasoning that I addressed was illogical. What is the point in listing anything when your logic is indefensible? Though, I did give examples of effects that I felt would move WE from being an autoinclude x3 (though I have yet to see an Empire deck based around mobility use them or that would be improved by adding them). You cannot prove a negative, so I can't prove that WE does not need to be banned. I can point out flaws in some of the arguments that it needs to be banned. This aspect of yours isn't even compelling. There have been far better arguments made against the card showing it is over powered and warps (pardon the pun) the meta (admittedly some of them were yours). I haven't been convinced that it reaches the point of banning yet, not when pretty much every solution brought up short of banning solves the stated problems.

Yes your expectations of the game need to change. This is a very fast and brutal game, by design. That you can't understand that was a design choice that Eric made and that Nate and now James have continued is no ones problem but your own. But I encourage you to go to Gencon, talk to James, and make your case. A coherent well thought-out argument well documented preferably with some decks to back up your position and conclusion, is much more likely to be persuasive than what you've done here.

Banning the card will not negatively effect my play experience or decks, nor has having it in the environment.

P.S.

You know extremely little about me and how frequently I play, who I play, or the number of games I've logged. Argumentum ad hominem, in this case, does not win supporters or invalidate the argument. Being on the internet you can simply refuse to acknowledge me or my statements, rather than lowering yourself to the point of committing classical logical fallacies for humor or attempts of dismissing something you cannot address.

Guy, have you ever studied logic? Argumentum ad hominem is not a fallacy. It certainly can be... for example, the statement "don't listen to dormouse because he's a giant moron" is a fallacy, and not a rational reason to discount your claims on whether warpstone should be banned. However, the statement "don't listen to dormouse because this discussion requires a certain degree of knowledge of the format and he has demonstrated time and again that he simply has no relevant play experience and speaks only in theory" is a perfectly logical means of attacking your position.

Yes, it is argumentum ad hominem, but it is not a logical fallacy. Glad I could clear that up.

As to my earlier argument being illogical, lets detail it out for you, shall we?

Premise 1: It is OK to consider banning a card for power level reasons.

Premise 2: If the maximum legal number of a card is played in every tuned deck, no matter what strategy the deck is attempting to execute, then it follows that the card in question is a powerful card.

Premise 3: The maximum legal number of Warpstone Excavation are played in every tuned deck, no matter what strategy the deck is attempting to execute.

So, the logic is: If premise 2 is true, then it follows from premise 3 that Warpstone Excavation is a powerful card. Then, by premise 1 we can conclude that Warpstone Excavation is a candidate for banning.

Note that it would take a more detailed explanation of what "banning for power level reasons" entailed in order to conclude that the card should definitely be banned (I went into this later in the first and subsequent posts, when I detailed the detrimental impact of narrow hate cards and the power level of the hate cards/difficulty of designing effective hate). But as far as the logic that I used in the first post, I think the above is completely clear and reasonable. You may disagree with the premises but that does not make the argument illogical.

I made this exact point, that it being a 3-of in every deck warranted discussion of banning the card (and not an outright ban, for which more detailed qualification of what being ban-worthy looks like) when I said this, in the original post you replied to:

• "Because if you don't, we don't, and FFG doesn't, and no one can come up with a deck that doesnt run the core 9 and wouldnt be improved by adding them, then maybe, just maybe, talking about banning or rotation is justified..." (emphasis added)

So I am guessing you misread that and didn't understand that I was not concluding that 3-of in every deck = ban. Care to retract the claim that my argument is illogical?

ddm5182

as some people already tried to tell you (including myself) : your premise 3. is NOT valid, as many tuned decks (mostly on order side) don't use WE, except Bolt Thower decks. Some decks also don't use innovation.

btw, to clear some smoke : ad hominem is a logical fallacy by definition. if you say "it's known that xy really don't know the game and what he is speaking about" is clearly an abusive ad hominem, which say nothing about the arguments about the person. Above (of course) that you disregard his opinion.

Attacking somebody (and in your case we talk about much of the player community as "somebody") based on "out of thin air" premises is not a valid argument. there is no evidence, except your unsupported claims that :

- you would have more, or at least as much gaming experience as anybody (or exact somebody, like dormouse, Wytefang or me) else
- you would have more, or at least as much insight into game mechanics as anybody (or exact somebody, like dormouse, Wytefang or me) else

Hovewer I think my claim is well suported, if I say that many of those people you attacked started to play the game much earlier than you even appeared in this forum. If I call it back right, both dormouse and Wytefang was here from the very first release.

But anybody who read your posts could see evidences for these :

- you are trying to base your argument partly on authoritarian ways - but you have no real authority/prestige to give it weight
- you are trying to base your arguments partly on experiences (which is good) - but you disregard any expereinces not matching your own
- you are also base your argument on your imagination of the game - but it's not relevant, as it's the designers imagination which forms the game, not our

Another mayor problem with you logic the deduction you get from your premises, as there are no hard conection between banning and power-level.

Some non-hypotetical real world W:I example for you :

- Pestilence and Shrine to Nurgle was a VERY powerfull combo in the old days - RESOLUTION : they reworded the Shrine

- Verena decks were almost unbeatable early on - RESOLUTION : soft depowering. Dwarwes could take down zounds of developments, orcs have enought cheap cards to stand up after a judgement etc... so now the card in question isn't dominant

As hard evidence shows banning is not definetly needed to depower powerfull cards and/or combos.

Also, you presented no evidence, and even no well defined arguing that why would be banning the so called "big three" would be healthy to the game. If you take out the lions from an are then it's not just become a nice field of boredom : the number of hebrovires maybe goes up to a level where they kill the fauna.

I think it wouldn't help in the meta, as order has enought other cards to fuel a powerfull economy, but destruction has nothing (except maybe orcs) close to that level. That means the number and competitiveness of unitless or almost unitless control decks would go up. Well, unitless decks is already a festering wound on this game, as this game is about figthing battles and wars, and it's not Sim City or Monopoly.

Compare it to other Warhammer based game : I'm thinking about sitting down to a game of WHFB without a single soldier on the map and win... I think THAT would be a good indicator that something is definetly wrong. (this is Bolt Thower deck) If I have an army, but my opponent overruns my artilery with fast cavalry before I could shot down every soldier of his, then it's only indicates that my tactic which depended on "it will be a slow battle with lots of exchange fo fire" was bad, and/or I built a bad (too narrow) army. It's not a problem with the game.

also note, that the game target is to have fast and furious battles, so "we should have a slower meta" is not really a valid argument. Having no WE level speed pump above WE itself is a more valid point.

But even then : it's only crippling if drawn in multiples early on. (this is why I recommended to make it unique), but it's true to any power card in any cardgame. Even a double-demolition/pillage could cripple many decks if played early on, but I never heard about a "ban Demolition and Pillage" thread so far.

(BTW : yes, I studied logic and philosophy to some extent)

Eh, I don't feel like more pointless logic derails. I appreciate your post, but I'd rather not get into it. I'll leave it here: argumentum ad hominem is not always an invalid line of argument, particularly where the qualifications of someone commenting on a topic that requires intimate knowledge are concerned.

Reflecting on this again actually, I realized dormouse probably just took me to be claiming "played in every deck = overpowered, ban it" which really wasn't what I was saying. I was saying "if you think its OK to ban cards on power level, then the fact that WE is played in every deck as a 3-of is evidence of its power and therefore candidacy for banning." I made a lot more points in this thread, but I think that was the source of the confusion, and why dormouse thought I was being illogical (because I agree that the line he thought I took wouldnt be a logical conclusion of my premises).

So, chalk it up to a misunderstanding and move on.

I must admit I'm kind of fed up of having games where one player drops 2 warpstones on turn 1, because the conclusion of the game is almost always decided there and then.

I've played a whole lot of WH:I at this point. If it was up to me, I'd just ban the **** thing and have done with it. But I know a lot of players really hate card bans. Restricting it to 1 per deck would be one alternative. A single warpstone on turn 1 is a big boost but it's not unsurmountable. Making it unique would also work but I don't like that for 2 reasons:

1) I don't like errata that changes the fundamental way that cards work.

2) You'd most likely still have 3 in every competitive deck and drawing them in the midgame would feel frustrating.

Does WE ruin the game? No. Would the game be better off without it? I think so.

I double majored in school and philosophy was one of them. As Cain said, Argumentum Ad Hominem is always a logical fallacy by definition. That does not mean it isn't a relevant discussion point when comparing opinions if you are discussing the experience of someone, but even if I had not been playing this game since before it was publicly released (and I was), and even if I had not been taught to play by the lead designer (and I was), and had discussions regarding design philosophy and direction with the then lead designer and the current designer (and I have), but in fact had no experience with the game that would not in and of itself make any statement I make incorrect. It at best would make it unproven by personal experience. That is precisely why AAH is a logical fallacy because it does not address the argument itself being presented it addresses the person making the argument.

The card is an accellerant. One which I believe does need to be reigned in to some degree. x3 in a deck is not directly related a cards power level, it is indicative of popularity. It does beg the question why is it so popular. In this case that the draw back is not strong enough to counter-act the zero resource cost and benefit of the card on the flop x1 and drops even more dramatically when it appears on the flop with greater frequency, would be my answer. I think the card is unbalanced. It was not when Chaos was corrupting everything under the sun. WE became a calculated risk. With the neutering of Chaos' corruption this card has far less to balance it out.

I agree that something needs to change with the cardpool in regards to this card, I just don't believe that Banning it is the solution when there are other means to handle it. Making the card unique would still allow it to be put in a deck x3, though you now have the increased chance of drawing a dead card. That is the kind of tough design decisions I'd like to see in this game more often. Making it Limited would still allow for a start, but keep it from coming out in multiples. Making it x1 in a deck would eliminate the x3 issue, and make it far less reliable. Introducing new cards that made corrupted units far more dangerous or defending far more necessary, would not affect the power level (whatever someone thought it was) of the card itself but would potentially make it less popular and more risky.

Clamatius said:

How is making it unique a bigger change in the way WE fundamentally works than having it restricted in a deck x1?

I could see you saying that making it Unique means the card gains change to the card, versus it being restricted is a change to the rules, but I don't know if this is the argument you are making.

Right, one is a change to the tournament rules and one is actually changing the card text. I'd rather change the tournament rules than the card text if possible. I wasn't excited about the Shrine to Nurgle errata because of that issue. Given that Chaos has been down on the power level recently, I wonder if the Shrine errata still needs to be there. At the time I think it was necessary because the Chaos corruption control decks were pretty unbeatable except with an early Judgement or a strong rush, but I'm not convinced that's the case any more.

Anyway, my current recommendation would be to restrict Warpstone rather than banning it. That way people can still play with it, noone is mad about a card being banned, and it still provides some draw variance in the game, but it's much less powerful since you can't draw multiples in the opening hand.

If the game hadn't been printed yet and was still in development, I would have just nixed it, but that's moot at this point.

That makes sense. I don't have a problem with errata myself, though it is lower on my list of preferred ways of dealing with balance issues, it is infinitely preferable to banning which to me is a tool of last resource, confined to cards that fall outside of the design direction of the game or whose very play ends games. WE as an accelerant x2 or more on the flop can certainly lead to the end of a game but the game is still played out, just with celerity. I'd rather find a way to prevent that from happening with other cards, or a tweak to that card.

I believe they are all valid design choices, and each person will have their own priorities. OF course the only people whose opinions matter right now are James Hata, Eric Lang (assuming he still has control on design direction), and then to a lesser degree I would imagine is the rest of the LCG design staff, and then farther down that list play testers.