Hi fellow gamers ! Hi to our ever growing number of trolls too !

Don't you think it was enought whining in the last few months to stop it ? We have no reasons to continue it I guess. (and also I have some points to say why)

What happened ? The biggest "problem-card" of W:I has become nerfed. Ignore the next paragraph if you are uninterested about my opinion about this, since it's not really the topic of this post... so reading that is optional. Base point is : the BT deck was unhealthy to the game, because many players left the game behind, and others (me included) gained a less happy attitude towards the game because mostly this deck.

[opinion on]

I think it was needed. The deck was one of the strongest archetypes because of a single card which would not be a problem in itself... but it was very unfun to play, or play against. And mch worse : it was far from the game original premise which was an army vs. army "dealing blows" confrontation wih much tactic included... there was no tactic and no hit exchange. It was lame. It caused people leave the game in droves, whitch was untrue for skavens or verena jumping packs... which is a clear indication that instant action was required. Even the world champion said it is broken as most of the still staying players community.

[opinion off]

There is already a new wave of whining madness in these forums from players who are partly from the "shot first ask later" type of guys... attacking players and developers because the nerfing, which they call by the dreadfull name "BAN !" There are also some veteran and very honest players too who think the nerf was unneeded, but they seems to be the minority. But they are both wrong. First I will examine the current possibilities for the Indirect damage route and especially RBT and after our other so-called problem cards.

The RBT worked because it could changed your incredible quantity of resources into the same aount of damage with a support and a single development. People saying that now it won't work, it is banned, killed, burned and taken a shovel in the head... but it's only partly right. First RTFC !!! (Read the F... Card !) This is the most important thing to learn in any cardgame :

Battlefield. Action: Spend
X resources to deal X indirect damage
to target opponent. X is the number of
your developments in this zone. (Limit
once per turn)

First thing to recognize : you could actually use it twice (once in your turn, once in your opponent turn) The second thing to recognize that with a single development (as yo used it before) it will be useless... you need more. You could still exchange (for example) 10 resources to 10 damage but you will need 5 developments instead of one. But maybe the most important thing to look at is the card pool : there are things like tiranoc outpost, warship, sea guard captain, suprise assault etc to deal a lots of indirect damage in the same deck. Oh, and you could play multiple RBT-s into BF, now it worth !

So all in all RBT (as a single damage dealing card) won't win by itself, but far from useless, and the indirect path stays viable.

About te other problem-cards :

- Reclaim the Fallen could win games with a big attack... but that's also true to Waaagh, and nobody ask for banning that. This card is not cheap, and needs time to make it effective (put many cards to the discard pile) while orcs/skavens could make a zoneburn strike in turn 2. So don't be ridicolous to ask for a ban for this. Also note that it needs place in a deck... with means something must be removed, and the current dwarf decks are not so filled with units. (The world champion decklist has only 17 dwarf units if I'm not mistaken)

- Mining Tunnels is a clearly powerfull support, especially if drawn in multiples. But hey, that's true to any powerfull card. (2 lobber crew anyone ?) But is it that overpwered ? if you have a single it gives you the ability to change a card in your hand, and in multiples it's a card draw engine... but a good card draw is managable with every deck. If you could keep your opponent from having 2 or 3 in the same time (support destruction do the trick... it i as needed as unit removal)

- WE ... it was discussed to the death. I guess the more unit-heavy enviroment will balance it a bit. Still VERY strong if drawn multiples in the first turns. Hovewer... since destruction don't have that effective supports as order they would be even more nerfed if WE get's depowered or banned.

I guess these are both great, but won't destroy the field.

That's all I wanted to say, so feed me to the trolls !

Cain

1) do you guys make "deckbuilding"? did you ever make a destruction unitless deck? now the destruction bolthrower is toilet paper, i've decided to use it as a bookmark for my novels. funny eh?

2) so basicly we have a strong card, that never officially won anything, that you guys cannot defeat (while we do lololol) so you decide to nerf/ban/burn/whateva it. that's briliant and typically american style. if you can't beat them, ban them.

were not trolling for the lulz nor for the internetz. were rly disapointed to see that a big company is scared of a bunch of forum users and decide to put his trousers off and give them all they want. what if for every OP card that gonna come out they gonna cry and pretend it to be banned/nerfed/whateva? FFG will kneel at them and say "YES SIR YES!". come on, is a company or a circus? are you rly in that need of cash?

and were also disapointed about the designers who clearly didnt know how to design properly a card. what are test and betatesting for?

Bolt-Thrower did win tournaments.

You are missing that Reclaming the Fallen with trigger the grudge throwers again.

RBT won 1 regional that's all.

oh guys, alrdy starting with blaming dwarfs? when gonna be the next nerf?

I am not going to respond to Kragg - there's no point feeding the trolls. Much better to just ignore that kind of post.

Cain_hu: yeah, you have good points. I think you will see more of what I was talking about in the long run about Tunnels and Reclaiming, but right now I'm just happy I won't have to play any more Fog/Thrower games. For sure, this will be the Dwarf faction's "time in the sun", just like Skaven after the Deathmaster's Dance BP. There may be decks that can beat the Dwarves but it'll be tough. At least the games should be fun again, which at the end of the day is the main thing.

I see where you are going with comparing Reclaiming the Fallen vs. Waaagh, but there's a big difference - you can stop Waaagh by just killing their guys.

The Thrower is still close to playable in the aggressive HE indirect deck I posted a while ago. It probably doesn't make the cut but it'll be on the shortlist of possibilities to test. That deck is surprisingly good - if the High Elves pick up a bit more oomph in the next BP or two, it may actually be a competitor.

Cain_hu said:

Cain_hu said:

I agree that maybe dwarf cards alone aren't that overpowered, but the deck as a whole is nighly unbeatable. Nowhere near the levels of other archetypes. Dwarfs were a very good deck after the end of Crruption Cycle. They got one of the best units in game, Longbeards, who provided them much needed hammers in the battlefield. Everything changed when the Enemy Cycle began and Order started to get much better, if not broken, cards compared to Destruction. With the arrival of Minning Tunnels+Ancestral Tomb+Master Rune of Spite combo every other deck's fate was sealed. And now they're getting Reclaiming the Fallen, which maybe woldn't be so over the top if not for Dwarf Ranger...

Cain_hu said:

This, no need to nerf destruction, when they're already' in deep ****

Cain_hu said:

Release the KRAKEN!

Kragg said:

1 I agree that de bolt thrower got hit badly by nerf hammer but no one was playing it anyway, so that's a fair price for nerfing reapeater.

2 The only reason bolt thrower didn't win the championships was because Dwarfs were equally overpowered and were the only counter to it.

As for your trolling, which is rather unsuccessful, I think that "americans" haven't banned you yet because they find it funny how one guy who thinks of himself as the guru of this game tries to force a company to do something by insulting them

Only cus your meta is far behind ours that doesnt mean that a card is useless and it deserve to be totally ruined. There are thousand of cards who were told to be lame instead they showed to be the strongest around, look at dwarfs for exemple.

Do you rly think Longbear are that strong? It got totally replaced by the new units from Enemy Cycle (f**k yeah, i'm a guru while you're not).

So right now, dwarfs are like skaven in the previus cycle, at least till the realese of next BP (which gonna bring back empire and high elfs) atm they are lots of cards with rly nasty combo between them. Even tho the whining team was still hiting the forum, FFG didn't make anything to stop skavens and it would be nice that they do the same against dwarfs.

Is funny how I'm pictured like a troll only cus I'm showing my disaccord with this move, while tons of you throwed **** on the company for months when they released skavens in the early corruption cycle.

@clamatius yea rbt is still playable, but now requires to put ingame more then just 1 boltthrower and requires many develops. if first this deck was going to win against orcs and other archeotypes, now is gonna die badly against a mono orc full control, giving them the chance to use grimgor directly in battlefield and not anymore in the realm zone. that's a great boost for other races like empire or chaos, but it wasn't rly needed, it was just a matter of playing better and smarter, not whining.

I love it when people say "if only we were at Worlds, we would have beaten you SO bad". Would have, should have. "Grow a pair" as you like to say, and come on over. If you are so uber-smart, the fare shouldn't be difficult to manage (smart people usually have some money). I know I beat the only European player I was against at Worlds, so I guess I can say I beat non-Americans 100% of the time. Woo-hoo!

Kragg said:

Kragg, I liked your posts better when you were insulting everyone and writing in caps lock. Clearly Clamiatus's Disdain has cancelled you Mobbing Up! : /

As you're only repeating yourself it's no longer fun so I will set some things straight for you. Bolt thrower got nerfed. And you can't do a thing about it. You can only hope that dwarfes avoid banhammer, but boy, I just have that feeling they won't...

jogo said:

The Order version of the Bolt-thrower did not win any tournaments that we're aware of on this site. Though a Destruction-based BT deck did win a small tourney.

How many tournaments are we "aware of on this site" though, like 5? This game's tournament scene is not exactly booming.

Wytefang said:

You are aware of.
Some tournaments in Germany were taken by it.
I would actually say, that we have the biggest tournament scene due to a qualification programm for the german championship.

If your meta is that good, start posting decks.

The fact that a certain card's decktype didn't win doesn't make the card any less overpowered. By all accounts, only a deck specifically designed to deal with it stopped Thrower from winning at Gencon. It is a card that is discussed after any new deck is posted. "Can it beat Thrower?" is a common refrain. Finally, there's posts about people not wanting to play because of it. That's not a good thing, either.

Bolt Thrower was an environment-defining or, more accurately, environment-deforming card. All deckbuilding, tournament discussion, and opinion about the game revolved around it. That defines a card that needs to change for the good of the game. The fact that it didn't "win the big one" is irrelevant. It defines the metagame in a negative way. There are very few people that would argue that.

Now, its a card that High Elves will make good use of but it won't be such a prevalent Order card, which is a good thing. Hopefully, it will help stabilize the metagame some, because I enjoy this game and want it to be fun. Yes, there's still some overpowered cards, and another potential problem one, but reducing Bolt Thrower's power level is a good start.

Bronn! I am your biggest fan!!!

Bronn said:

I agree and disagree with some of these remarks. For the record, I think it's not had a positive impact on the game's gameplay environment- however, just because a vocal contingent in these forums loudly denounced it doesn't necessarily mean that the masses denounced it or had issues with it. This forum (as is often the case) probably represents maybe 1% of the gaming base that's playing the game. It's a bummer but it's the reality. So using it as any kind of reference probably is unreliable, at best.

I'd have to say that the fact that it didn't win too many tournaments IS somewhat relevant, as those are the kinds of real-life intense situations that reveal a deck's potential and overall quality.

I agree with their errata of this card, regardless, but I'd just suggest that W:I gamers don't put too much stock into a whole lot of what is postulated, theorized, and discussed ad nauseum in just these forums alone. Between the known trolls, the know-it-alls, the casual players, the hardcore tourney crowd, and everyone else in between, it's hard to really feel the most accurate pulse of the game.

Jogo, if I wanted to post more stuff I would. It's not your place to determine what I do or do not post here.

Wytefang, I don't understand what you're trying to say. Your above comment is hedged with so many "doesn't necessarily mean", "probably" "I'd just suggest" type comments that I honestly can't discern the point you are trying to make.

Are you saying "proving stuff is hard"? Are you generally observing that these forums are a pointless waste of time? Or just expressing your personal opinion about the state of things today, not meant to be generalized?

Wytefang said:

Whether a small portion of the forums were yelling about it or more than that, its hard to argue with the fact that it was an environment-deforming card. You just have to look at its ability to do easy damage. Combined with the Dwarf's ability to spam out developments, its pretty easy for them to start dropping a good amount of damage with few ways to stop it. If you don't have those answer cards in your deck, you pretty much auto-lose. That's a negative play experience and bad for the game, especially one that espouses the fact that its a mostly casual player's game.

Now, at the highest levels, perhaps there were ways to deal with it (Gencon results being a pretty large sample), but that's predominantly one decktype that can stand up to it well and few others that can without the aforementioned meta. Limiting deck design by making 6+ cards in a 50-card deck mandatory in case you face a deck isn't healthy for the game either. Again, this is a casual player's game predominantly and driving them away is bad for business. When you see multiple posts on the forums, be the forums 1% of players or more, that say they've banned Thrower in their groups, that says something. Its the same reason I didn't build Skaven at their height early in the game's life. I wanted others to play with me.

There's a big difference between environment-defining and environment-deforming cards. The former are what high-level players put into decks and can swing a game but there's usually many answers for them. A big Hero may define an environment or a mass-removal card. And Thrower without the development spam of Dwarfs may have been defining as well. But in conjunction with them, it was too much. Casual players didn't want to play the game or banned the card in their groups. Heck, high level players didn't want to play the game with it around either. That's a card that needed fixing before irreparable damage was done to the game. We lost half our local players during the Skaven era, and I'm sure our group wasn't the only one. Thrower was having a similar effect. I'm worried that Reclaiming the Fallen will also have a bad effect, as it reminds me of Wrath of Kali-Ma from L5R last year, a card that also dropped lots of units into play with no real answer and one that had to have errata to stop it from deforming the environment. Its nice that the designers of Invasion want to push the envelope of power level, and hope that they continue to do so, but sometimes things get pushed too far and it needs to be fixed.

Wytefang said:

Bronn said:

Being played and not winning repeated tournaments does pretty much prove that the card was environment defining rather than deforming from a strict game view. Which is what Wytefang is talking about. You are referring to the meta-game however, where how a player aproaches deck-building, and thinks and feels about the game, where it was deforming.

Sad to say perception is reality far to often. If three very vocal posters on here can convince everyone that card or deck X is abusive, broken, and not fun, people will start to see it that way every time the card/deck wins. People stop trying new decks examining the field and instead concentrate on the supposed card/deck as being the thing to beat. Now in this case there are several factors to consider, the RBT unitless decks were counter to the world of this game. Anything not thematic should always be examined as a possible target of errata. LCG's allow for a relatively immersive experience and something that pulls you out of that (or in this case kicks you in the teeth with it) needs to be addressed. The deck was not fun to play against, when it won its opponent often had the feeling that nothing they did mattered, no unit, tactic, or support would make any difference to the outcome of the game. The deck was a task to play, but that was more about managing your cards than worrying about what your opponent was doing. Those three things together warrant errata in some fashion, even if the card/deck is not winning every tournament. I could even argue that only those three things matter and that a card/deck simply being overpowered is not enough to warrant an errata. If it is fun to play, fun to play against, and thematic, let the meta sort itself out with the constant stream of new cards.

Dwarf decks should be looked closely at and Mining Tunnels and Reclaim are high on the list... Banning? Nope. Errata? Maybe. What then? Counter-strategies. Cards for Dwarfs that demand a different strategy. Cards for Destruction that take advantage of what those cards do turning their use into a negative for the Dwarf player, or an advantage for them (say a Chaos unit that gains hammers when your opponent play a development, or a support that lets you corrupt a unit when your opponent plays a development in the corresponding zone). Neither of those are perfect, and they are both a little silver bullety but the idea of how to handle powerful cards/decks that don't run counter to the ideas of the game is a sound one.

It is always good to know FFG is listening, and hopefully really giving some hard and honest looks at the game as a whole and not just the level of sound and fury being kicked up here.

Well over here we play casual. Last night did a multiplayer and before that had a few games against my brother.

I cannot help but 'whine'. Same goes for everyone else involved including my brother. The Dwarves are plain insane. The synergy between their cards and the ease with which to outdo others...

I'm not usually one to complain but the Dwarves really stand at the top without question.
On a positive note when playing casually High Elves and Dark Elves seem roughly at the same height of power atm. Chaos and Orcs perform admirably.
Empire still needs to be tried but has caught the attention of the store owner, he likes finesse factions like that so I may give it a try to build a deck

In any case one or two more cycles and I suspect far more balance will be attained.
What does worry me is that there are so many radical 'gamechangers' out there.

Overall I'm loving the game, the art, the fluidity of the system. And a relatively young game like this will naturally have growing pains.

we usually run a few tournies here in glasgow, i'll admit nothing official but the unitless bolt thrower deck won 8 times out of 10, it was a truely horrible deck becuase unless you dedicated a deck to purely countering it, it was a truely tough game. i think it's nerfing is a good thing, i also think that the fact the FFG listened to it's player base and made a ruling which takes the game back to the world it's based in (lets face it how many games of fantasy have you ever seen played where 6 elves showed up with thier bolt throwers and they proceeded to horse an entire army by themselves).

Yeah the real reason to errata Bolt Thrower wasnt because it was unbeatable. It was exhausting to play against, limited viable deck construction, and drove players away from the game. A unitless control deck can still compete, it is just no longer as strong as it was (especially with outpost in play).

jogo said:

My apologies then, for misinterpreting your remark, Jobo.

Penfold said:

This is a very good post. Thanks for making it. Well said, sir.